


The Great War Arthurian

by RiptideLetMeGo



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arthurian, Canon-Typical Violence, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Dragon!Reid, During Canon, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Freeform, M/M, McReid, No Civilian Kills | Not Even Once, Tarot, dragon reid - Freeform, pacifist reid, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25872073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiptideLetMeGo/pseuds/RiptideLetMeGo
Summary: Mercy has brought mortal enemies to a common ground, and together they face the Morgan and Morrígan of their generation, as did Merlin and Arthur eons before.“He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.”― T.H. White, The Once and Future King[Pacifist Jonathan Reid spares Geoffrey McCullum and they go on a partnership to end the epidemic. A romance with concepts inspired by the Arthurian legends, freeform with the abilities and lore presented in game. Could be considered an AU. Read the tags for more of the contents present.]
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	1. I, Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thanks for reading!
> 
> \- The only beta reader of this is my second personality.
> 
> \- Fun fact: Electric billboards like the one in Finsbury Theatre were only created in 1923. The first was placed in the London Pavillion in said year. Vampyr ditches this for aesthetics like it did to remote controllers and I can’t blame them for it.
> 
> \- Comment if you want - if you don’t like commenting, you can hit me up on my Twitter (@CDNM_Herja) or Instagram (@cdnm_herja) if you want. I don’t mind either, and you might be reading this on your phone and be too lazy to log in AO3, which is a mood and I relate.

  
  


With his life like an album of ghosts, he didn’t think there was enough room in his mind, nevermind heart and life, to fit another event, outstanding enough to haunt. His older memories alone filled the silence, made idleness an unwelcome thing as it was, lurking ghosts of regrets, lives, longing. He was as susceptible to them as any man, but one thing he had never considered was how being spared too could become an event to haunt.

For he had been spared, that was the undeniable and observable truth. He had been spared, handed his life back to do with it as he wished, no strings attached, handed it back in the same ease he handed Geoffrey handed it to the odds of conflict, and the dangers of his trade. He had been spared from the day of the Doctor’s turning and onwards; he had been spared by every avoided encounter, just a turn away, a battle he could hear but by the time he arrived, it was over, clearly interrupted. He had been spared from the moment the man stepped on the Hospital’s attic, and he had been spared throughout the battle, to its very end.

Geoffrey was glad to be alive, albeit the emotion was weak in such a statement. He had a loose grasp on it in the first place, any tighter and he wouldn’t be half of the hunter he was, but still he couldn’t dismiss the events from his early memory so easily, no. Being spared was not something common in his trade, and for several nights, he had stared at the ceiling of the Finsbury Theatre, an ashtray perched over his sternum, bobbing up and down as he breathed - the risk of it sliding and spilling was high, with his bandaged chest being far more slippery to the piece of cheap porcelain than if it was bare, but he couldn’t spare it enough concern to remove it. 

If he wanted any peace of mind about this, he would have chosen another place to sleep; the Guard of Priwen had innumerous outposts and scattered bases, as well a few buildings donated and owned by members themselves. None, absolutely no one would object to help their leader settle; as a matter of fact, to move from one base to the other, a nomadic movement through the city, it was their usual. Geoffrey always liked to set up base at the edge of conflict, a shepherd on the outskirts of the pasture. Leeches would do the same, and the earliest to the herd tended to prevail. As such, Geoffrey wouldn’t give any leech the chance to beat him to it. 

But still, as comfortable as he may be in the very same mattress he had been sleeping on the last few months or so, the Finsbury Theatre didn’t allow him to forget. It had been the home of a plethora of performances throughout its existence, performances which were never in his routine to attend, but all the same he felt hyper-aware of the Theatre’s latest spectacle. How could he not? Whenever a new play arrived, the walls he was used to walking by were filled overnight with new colours, dulled and darkened by the night, but still unsoiled from pollution and rain, a statement to their recent printing. 

Street corners and alleyways under those posters always remained the same since the beginning of London, and were met with bombs, rain, paint or blood, but would still stubbornly remain the same. Unwavering pieces of history, that even the uneducated could feel the age upon stone. Walls those that he knew better than the lines of his palms - his housing changed as many times as required, but the city he hunted in, oh, that had been London for what felt like ages now, and he knew it as if it had been made by his own design. When a play was close to ending, or when the Theatre was ready to close its doors, pamphlets about it crunched under his boots, making a noise that otherwise would never have been there. Despite their apparent bulkiness, his boots were always remarkably quiet.

All this awareness, only for him to realise he had never seen a play there. He had circled it enough times in his life, watched from under street lamps or from the darkest corners the buzzling crowds that gathered before broad doors, under wide billboards with its bright lights, making casual, unorganised lines, sprinkled with minor circles; colourful attires and joyful voices, embellished and fine like the laces that adorned women’s dresses, jewelry and eyes gleaming, reflecting the abundant brightness the neighbourhood offered, even at night.

The lavish crowd, composed of intellectuals, aristocrats and politicians might look different at first, with ranging sizes and colours, the exotic wears of women and the varied width of men, but that betrayed the simple truth that they were all the same. It was always the same disdain towards the low born, be it accompanied with a faux politeness or blatant rudeness, it mattered little. Within, underneath their masks of civilness, they were the same beast, animals in a cattle, the same despite the different patterns of their hides. They would all taste the same for a wolf, without a doubt. And there were wolves in their midst - a gathering of carrion eaters with wolves in disguise among them, and most of them didn’t even notice. Difficult even to point out what kind of beast was worth less.

It was what he sought in these crowds, after all. Before the alleyways became a no-man’s land and Skals, Vulkods and Vampires reigned absolute in them, cornering mankind within their homes, invading those too whenever the chance presented itself, before then, the work of the Guard had always been more discreet. A witch hunt resorted to the shadows, dedicated to observing crowds and following a suspect to a darkened corner. It should have never changed, he mused - the Guard of Priwen didn’t seek recognition from civilians, nor sought political power. They weren’t Ascalon. They were men and women in a war that for a long date, had happened mostly in subterfuge, with an eventual pyre here and there to light the night ablaze.

The Theatre, as familiar as it was, and regardless of how many fractions of plays he caught glimpses of, it didn’t interest. It wasn’t designed for someone from his cut of society. Nonetheless, Geoffrey had always thought that watching a play was long overdue, at least to be able to say he didn’t enjoy the extenuous, prolix thing. 

And one night he had a play to behold alright.

It could be heard from the front doors, and while the men struggled to sort out the locked double doors that led to the Theatre’s vast room, he climbed up the stairs to the balcony, legs sparing a few inches higher to his strides as he transpassed the corpses of Skals, still dripping blood on the dark red carpet. Their bodies were discarded and ripped over the staircase in careless positions, torn and dropped like abandoned ragdolls, forgotten by some child as it ran off to anything more interesting.

The balcony concealed him in shadows, chairs pushed to corners and away from the half wall that safeguarded attendees from falling over, and right now, it felt like a poor, feeble barrier between him and the stage. It being well-lid did little to aid him in making sense of the play before him; the sounds alone were something to cower from. The Theatre’s acoustic architecture made it so that noise travelled loud and clear to all galleries present, but while it would have been advantageous to make out one’s speech, in this situation, it seemed to amplify anything beyond recognition.

His investigation gave him a name to what he saw before his eyes, even if he couldn’t properly recognise either figure. Doris Fletcher, and Doctor Jonathan Emmet Reid. If Geoffrey had hoped to take part in a battle against any of the beasts in question, the desire to do so bled out of his ears with the screech that shook the Theatre whole, making the lights flicker. 

The most hideous Skal he had ever seen stood on a side of the stage, one of its arms a mutated, red and sinewy malformation easily as thick if not thicker than its other arm and chest together. The cancerous overgrowth turned the limb into a massive weapon, the figure clad in an exotic, patterned skirt and top, some play’s costume surely, adding to the absurdity of the creature. It was nearly difficult to tell it had been human once, and not a mockery of the human figure since birth. That impression was reserved to what opposed it on the stage.

As far as the Hunter knew, veins belonged within one’s body, but the sight at the stage betrayed the concept, with thick tendrils not unlike veins stretching its way past skin and cloth to lick at the air, branches their roots being the Doctor’s own body. Tendrils which twisted around him, thickened around his forearms and legs, making the figure look less like a man, more like a sculpture of thorns, a body broken into something bigger, deadlier…  _ Inconsistent,  _ much like the shadows they slipped in ever so often, liquid as the blood they wielded like weapons. The sight was an abuse of every one of these skills he had ever heard reported, many of them he took for exaggerations or hallucinations entirely. 

Claws, immaterial and liquid looked poised and at the ready next to the Doctor, the other hand closed on the handle of a hacksaw. It was difficult to see the leech under so much blood, the red tendrils at his back snapping and making him greater and inhuman, surrounding him with a crimson miasma, eyes a reflective, bright red the Hunter could see from the balcony, as if spotting a Blinker Skal in a dark sewer. The Ichor bellowed, its arm unfurling and swinging towards the Ekon, a reach much longer than anything natural would have. 

The Doctor’s dodge to the side was as quick yet minimal, only enough to evade the blow, movement merging with a draw back. His jaws parted, framed by impossibly red eyes and elongated teeth. The screech that left the beast shook the Theatre, resonating through the Hunter’s spine and marrow, and it was the only warning preceding the leap he did forward, hacksaw swinging a precise arc to the still-human right half of the Ichor. 

The battle hadn’t been fair, despite the monstrous woman’s tall figure and massive arm; one would think that with an arm like that her strength would have been unmatched, but the leech was always a step ahead, perforating be it with claws or hacksaw. Her saber sliced when she was close enough, but it never landed on the leech; finding the blood around him like barbed wire, thicker branches sprouting from his back, the only blood shed had been hers. The sight was demonic - a creature of blood, making a play and dance with the most hideous Skal the Hunter had ever seen.

Geoffrey had spent enough nights dissecting that sight in his mind, turning it left and right, crossing it out with some of the reports he had salvaged in a box solely reserved for unconfirmed information. It was by far the largest of them, with the box of confirmed intelligence being much smaller and compact in comparison. This was a Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole activity, to seek in history and rumours information about the origin of immortals, and as such, the Hunter had little interest in it. 

But this one time, as he recovered, he permitted himself to spare the time to read and disappoint himself with his lack of findings. There were some sightings and suggestions of very powerful leeches that had such abilities - Geoffrey himself had met such - yet none were like what he had seen. Those leeches that manipulated shadows and blood as if it was smoke to be fanned, but the extent of their supernatural abilities now seemed discreet, minimal and harmless in comparison to the monster he had seen. 

There was nothing he could find about the extent those skills could go, nor what they meant. It alone was a sight to haunt him - an eerie beast, concealed in the veins of a leech that, at the end of that battle, when the Ichor had bled out and kneeled, it was what it was. An Ekon, as they called themselves, a husk and mockery of a man. 

As unnatural as a stream running upwards, the talon-like claws retreated from around his hands and feet to re-enter the leech’s body, quick and slick, leaving no stains. The barrier that surrounded him with its red miasma and outer structures gathered on itself, withdrawing to the branches rooted on its back and quick to return to the leech’s body. If it passed through his skin like it did to his clothes, or if the clothing was concealing the ripping and reforming of flesh and arteries, he didn’t know and was thankful for being spared the sight in any case. 

When he regarded the Ichor, it was once again not unlike a man in any form, difficult to tell from the living for the untrained eye. He bent down on one knee to talk with the pleading woman like he would regard an equal, his voice firm, but gentle. The leech humoured her dramatic rant, her mind definitely broken and lost by the change, but that she remained dedicated to her former role as actress even throughout her delirium was nearly pitiful. The leech seemed to take pity on her, praising her on her achievements, enough perhaps to grant her a second of lucidity and for her to understand her death was inevitable, leading to her choice to immolate herself where she stood. 

Beast to man, it would always catch Geoffrey off guard the ease in which they pretended to have some humanity left. He had seen what lay within Reid’s veins, he had seen the taloned monster, unlike any other leech Geoffrey had ever pinned down. Reid’s head on a spike would be the greatest prize the Hunter could ask for, yet, there was a thin line between confidence and foolishness. Despite always crossing it when he saw it fitting, he didn’t do so unaware. He did not think he was up to par with what he had seen, not at all, yet he had vowed to try.

And he had tried. God stood witness, he had tried. 

Geoffrey had not held back from employing time and dedication to his investigation, and then to finally prepare to face the beast as it was. He had uncovered much; Swansea’s involvement, the connections between the patients back to Pembroke, and the likeness of Marshall’s involvement, it was a tapestry woven like a net - more holes than threads, but the ones that held, did so sturdily. 

In the end, he had been half right. Swansea was responsible, as far as he knew. The proof was impossible to ignore. He armed himself as if to face William Marshall himself, employing all the tools of the trade that he could gather, even a drop of King Arthur’s blood itself, the Guard’s most mysterious but precious relic. The King had died a hero, the greatest defender of Britain from what relics and tomes the Guard had in their possession.

If notes and memoirs were to be trusted, there was might and power to be gained from drinking even a drop of his blood. More than ever he believed he would need the blessing, whatever it was. 

Swansea’s special room in the attic of the Hospital wasn’t a secret to Priwen, the Administrator might think himself secretive, but he was hardly so, especially when ordering so much equipment unrelated to the medical field from famous pioneers of Britain, known for their technological experiments. To be watchful of anyone from the Brotherhood always paid off. Orichalcum powder in quantities much bigger than he had ever seen, he had all the means to even the fight, perhaps even have an upper hand at it. 

His racing heart betrayed the steeled confidence he had when he first arrived at the attic and prepared his trap. It nearly wavered, when Reid stepped in. 

The world wasn’t fair, he knew, but it seemed particularly cruel to grant beasts such talents. Confusion, concern, were Reid but a man, he would have called his pale eyes transparent from the discrete nuances of emotion they displayed, be it in his features or in the waiver of his voice. Being a newborn perhaps granted him more naturality to mimic men, made him lack the knife-edge taunt and spite any older leech would have in their voice. Reid had a Doctor’s intonation, a concern and purposefulness to every word he spat out as if the world was his patient, Doris and Geoffrey included, no distinction, no greater or lesser value.

For a ruse, it was believable. Thoroughly, deeply believable. But a trick all the same. The man never had intended to fight him, the Hunter could see. The many times he had sent men to observe Whitechapel, corner the entrances and exits of the neighbourhood, very few ambushes actually fell to the leeches’ blade. He knew the man to be a killer, all leeches were, but he avoided ambushes more often than not. 

Reid was not the only leech to do so - most of them preferred blood earned by acquaintances, the more trust placed on them, the better. Such a pattern of behaviour was observable in leeches with experienced sires, or belonging to societies such as the infamous Ascalon Club. It was a Vulkod or Large Beast’s preference to earn their blood through battle and hunt, not a leech. But even so, whichever neighbourhood the Vampire Doctor visited, the Guard was yet to find a single victim in said night. And he had sought, how he had spurred his men to find it, but there was no trace of civilian victims by the  _ good Doctor Reid _ . 

He hadn’t had any confirmed deaths, only the telltale signs of a leech’s grooming; Whitechapel particularly had an adoration for the man, whom nearly every night bypassed Priwen patrols and distributed medication, alleviating the clandestine infirmary ran by a former Nurse of Pembroke. He solved matters, found lost items in his wanderings, brought people from Skal-infested burrows. If Reid wanted a feast, the entirety of Whitechapel must be the buffet of the century. 

Yet, there was not a single body to be found, no man or woman missing. The same to the Docks, West End and Temple Garden. 

It was a ruse, of course. But as time progressed, the less sense he could make out of it. It didn’t make sense, either, to have been spared. Reid had already spared him from the moment he stood upright, the ultraviolet curtain out for the time being, and as Geoffrey drew his sword, the Doctor drew his hacksaw, a comedically appropriate weapon for the façade the leech wore to the world. And the hacksaw was the only weapon he drew.

As the battle progressed, and through many wounds on the leech’s sides and various burns from either orichalcum or light, Geoffrey was expecting to see more, fight more. To find claws on his throat, whenever there was an opening, to find spears of blood perforating his back whenever the leech quickly jumped out of his sword’s swing. There was none. Even his blows were measured, although it hurt to recognise such, they were measured to don’t cripple the Hunter. It was enraged and embarrassed him both. 

His sword tore the leech from shoulder to hip, the lights burned and blackened his skin enough to become ashen, not healing from one exposition to the lights to the other, yet, all the red he had seen had been Reid’s blood, sprayed on the floor, or in the syringes the doctor unfurled from the inner pockets of his coat and stabbed his own back with. He healed faster, after them, but only so. 

It had to be some ruse, to drag himself through near-death several times, a howl of pain at every blow Geoffrey landed, only for long enough to exhaust the Hunter so he could knock him out of his feet, blunt bruises and minor wounds keeping Geoffrey from standing right away. Exhausted, the two of them, one by choice, and the other inevitably. And there, he walked away. Hate and exasperation mingled like a poison on the leech’s words, not at all unbecoming of a hunted beast, but even so, merciful. 

That was the word Reid chose, among many others he could have handed him as an explanation. Mercy. As if giving the Hunter another day was a great feat beyond the ability of any leech, as if they weren’t deceitful creatures, more than eager to plot and scheme for centuries on end. Foolish, to think delayed death could fool one of Priwen, especially one as seasoned into its ranks as the Leader himself. At the very least, Marshall’s newborn was naive to think such would work, naive to believe that helping Geoffrey to his feet would change anything.

Geoffrey spat on the floor as he left, and promised the beast its death. Reid’s insufferable, unwavering optimism, usually reserved to civilians, granted the leech some humour, enough to bring up the fact Geoffrey had said his name instead of calling him anything else. And with it, he was gone. Not once had he seen the monster that faced Doris Fletcher; that red, blood-thirsty devil, taloned and spiked that now visited haunted his dreams, no. He had battled the Doctor façade the leech wore, and even so, he lost.

No surprise then, that several days later, he remained where he was, for once heeding by the words of the resident Priwen Doctor - just another clinic newbie who lost his license and was willing to work anywhere, as long as it was their field. Geoffrey didn’t give the young man much mind, even less to his warnings; he had patched himself up for most of his life and he didn’t need a pompous bastard telling him how he should be dressing his wounds, but alas, this one time, he allowed himself to rest.

Or rather, he took his time to think - that his body could use the rest was but a beneficial side effect. 

He debated on whether or not he should light another cigarette, the craving blending indistinguishably with this particular kind of boredom, unique in its thoughtfulness, but restless on the body. If he opted to don’t smoke again, he would feel like standing, either diving again on relics and old documents in search of any detail that might have passed him by, or he would stand and head for the streets again, although he wasn’t in the right mind to hunt. Hunting when distracted was the downfall of wiser, better men than himself, and he didn’t think himself a fool so big as to endanger himself without a clear goal.

And what was his goal, for now? The investigation on the Skal epidemic had come to face a brick wall. Evidence pointed to Swansea’s involvement but only his, and no motive or hints of Marshall. As far as reports showed, Reid had taken him from the Finsbury Theatre by the time Geoffrey was limping his walk of shame out of the Pembroke, meeting some of his men by the trucks near the back gardens of the facility. What became of Swansea was unknown so far, but he wasn’t sure the absence of information was good news.

What else was there to know? Was there any other way to combat it besides what the Guard had already been doing, which was to kill any immortal on sight? It was fruitless, he knew, at least now aware it wasn’t just any regular increase in Skal, Vulkod and Vampire numbers, nor was it Influenza alone. Priwen was the last bastion between mortal men and this infestation, yet it was like trying to put out a fire with a mug. 

He didn’t know how to proceed, nor did his men. Geoffrey wasn’t the kind of Leader to keep secrets from them, and it took a couple days but very soon he came to address the subject with his most trusted circle. The content of his investigation wasn’t unknown to them, but they deserved to know the defeat he suffered at Pembroke, and his suspicions. They debated, voiced their opinions and concerns. But much like Geoffrey himself, there was no straight path to choose, nor immediate action to take. 

Talented leeches made all routes seem foggy with their involvement. Intentionally or not, Reid had such skill. It all came down to what he would do, and the truth was, Geoffrey still didn’t know. 

Putting the ashtray on the bedside table, he slowly supported his body on his elbows, working to sit on the edge of the bed, then stand by impulse. Days, he had spent days cooped up in this Theatre, mulling on the events and finding no peace. If peace was what he sought, to at least clear the way before him, he could only think of a single place to go.

Carl Eldritch hadn’t been a perfect man, far from it. His adoration and respect for the man didn’t cloud his judgement so; he had been a little too heavy on the whiskey at times, and had a terrible temper, one that was said Geoffrey inherited honourably. Nonetheless, visiting the man’s grave always brought him some peace to make decisions. The Great Hunt remained ongoing at full force, and it would remain so with or without his participation - even his death wouldn’t cease it, he had trained his men well.

He dressed fast, armed himself, and headed outside to greet the early evening. Hopefully, he would be back before he could be missed and before dusk. He convinced himself, as he headed to Stonebridge Cemetery, that he preferred to return before dusk only for his own safety, not trusting his sword arm when distracted like this.

Truth was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to face the pyres and patrols on his way back, face the Great Hunt he had unleashed and now was beginning to question, in the deepest recesses of his mind, like he was questioning everything he knew and everything he had done. Truth was, he wasn’t sure he was ready to face anything blue eyed on his way there and back. 

The mercy in those eyes concealed a monster, and yet he found no explanation for such a pretend and why bother concealing it in the first place, when it could only be a drawback to do so. Believing it was deceit was better than facing it and considering for a fleeting moment that it wasn’t.


	2. I, Merlin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for pressing next chapter! I hope this, in Jonathan’s POV, interests you even more. Sorry for it being lengthy, I need to explain a few things. Please check the end for more notes once you’re done!

A cup of tea rested delicately within pale fingers, seeping warmth sparsely through the thick, dark and foreign clay to the cold flesh underneath. It had been held for a while long enough that even the delicate hold, so careful with the item, as if it was more fragile than it looked, could heat the piece and grant the long digits some comfort with its warmth.

It was the only comfort tea would bring; its warmth, scent, and most important of all benefits, the memory and practice of it, was its true reward. He liked it even if he couldn’t stomach the beverage anymore, he barely held the desire to drink it. It was like watching a puddle on the street while thirsty, the craving existed and the memories of water were many, but the desire to kneel on the middle of the street to sip from it didn’t exist, not even crossed his mind.

It was a paradoxical existence, to define it loosely. Jonathan was a man of science, ever the curious child, engaged in the early academic logical processes of thought he had been presented with in his expensive education. Involved with so many fields of study so embedded in logic, it normalised skepticism and views that were agnostic at best, absolutely God-challenging at others. The dedication to such studies produced a life of research, experiment and diagnosis he had been joyful to live through. It was never peaceful, especially the part of his career that he spent in war, but a career meaningful and satisfying enough, constantly challenged with puzzles and situations greater than himself, yet that he tackled every day with nothing less than zeal.

Skepticism suited him, both his personality and his profession. A scientist’s trajectory was a lithe road between the boldness of attempt and the hindrances of ethics, ever necessary to remain true to medicine’s genuine goals. The power over a person’s life, so dismissable in a war, had the greatest importance in a Doctor’s constitution. Experimentation could never blindly endanger one who put their trust in his hands, and wherein he had so much power to harm, and so often, so little power to give aid, he ought to not harm.

The Hippocratic Oath, whom so many had taken before and many would take after him, could be perhaps easily forgotten before the current woes that surrounded this age. Yet, Jonathan had never seen a greater need to remember it as he did in war. A Doctor at war, as much of an officer as he was a physician, balancing the scalpel and a gun on either knee, he had always sought to stay true to the Oath greater than himself. 

If he ought to fight for himself and his patients, his coworkers, his friends, he would do so. To embrace his death instead of a patient’s, or to remain idle when they were harmed, that wasn’t predicted by the oath, nor expected, while another fraction of it warned against that same distancing and limitation to being only the healer of illnesses, and not of lives. He found himself justifying, ever so often as a man fell to a bullet from his gun, that to heal was to protect;  _ Remember that you do not treat a fever chart or a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. One’s responsibility includes these related problems, if one is to care adequately for the sick.  _

To heal was much harder than it was to kill, yet to protect - a fine line to do harm so to prevent harm whenever he was faced with no other choice - it seemed viscously easy. Incontable times he had been cornered, with his only resource to prevent harm being to survive a day longer, protect through harm, it was never an easy choice to make or justify, albeit any other seemed much harder to sleep with; to loiter, permit death to come to those he swore to heal, it seemed just as bad as bringing a patient to an earlier death, willing and consciously. 

There was no light in these roads he was brought to transverse. War, a cruel mistress she was, offered only darker, bottomless pits on either side, so easy to slip into what would be easier on himself, perhaps truer to his nature, any man’s nature, which was to preserve oneself from hurt. The safer routes were no brighter than the wildest, unruliest ones. Jonathan walked them alone, demanded of himself more strength and effort than he believed he had it in himself to demand. If there was a God out there watching the Doctor, surely He couldn’t blame him if he chose to don’t cross fire to save a life that might already be lost. He wouldn’t frown upon the good Doctor for sparing resources from someone who might recover and promptly raise a gun to him as soon as they had the strength. 

Yet, that was the effort he wielded every day, even when the route through fire was painful and fruitless. Even when he was met come morning with a gun’s barrel on his temple. He would not play God, that was predicted at the Oath. He would not be judge and jury if he could, he would heal, and protect to heal. He held unto it even in undeath. 

The beating heart across him tempted, undeniably. He was a man at a bar, a crystal fountain pouring before his eyes, yet the only water he was permitted to drink was the puddle outside - there was nothing easy in this choice, in the standards he imposed on himself, but he followed them all the same. It was something he had heard from wiser men, more knowing than himself; all was but a matter of time before he succumbed, he could try and push against the world as much as he wanted, but he could not avoid its turning regardless of how much he willed it so. 

Then so be it, he supposed. If it was a fruitless battle, and across the battlefield and its whistling bullets, if through it all there was nothing to save anymore, no resemblance to humanity, then so be it. It was his oath to behave as there was, as there always would be. To give the world the chance of doubt, and believe despite the odds logic presented, that if he pushed for long enough, he might actually halt it.  _ Remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.  _

His duty required a warmth that now his body lacked and a faith his mind had never truly owned, but Jonathan would wield them both to treat whatever case he faced.

He found peace on the repetitive taunt of the beating heart before him, organ filling slowly, unhurried, to squeeze in a beat that filled arteries with hot, red vessels. Rivers which branched out to the smallest veins, the thinnest of streams, like the countless branches of a large rainforest river, seen from above. Blood cooled, and returned a little like a ripple, exactly the rhythm of waves on any riverbank, delicate and well-paced, before the heart pushed it a few inches over stone once more, the incessant pace of a healthy body of water. 

The pattern enraptured him, even before. It was his field of expertise after all. Blood and what it carried, what could be done with it, applied and removed, analysed and altered. The bittersweet irony saw no end to it. His vision brightened, only to behold instead the drawing patterns of steam in the air, a scented cloud he brought closer to himself so he could breathe it, feel it warm the insides of his airways nearly hot enough to burn.

Across his lap, rested a sword. Over the table between them, cards facing down that had been shuffled thoroughly for minutes on end, the movement slow for his senses but surely quick and experienced to the man seated across him. 

“You seek so many answers, one can only but wonder what will become of you once you have them all. Many lose the strength of their will when they arrive to the end of their quests.” Usher explained, fingers merging one half of a pile of cards onto the other one, making them bend and fall slowly into a single pile, one that like a pile of sand, with palms on either side, could be gathered together into a single mount. 

“The last thing I’d expect from a scholar is to be warned against seeking knowledge.” Jonathan said, gaze rising from the Primate’s hands to meet his eyes, dark irises reflecting even more candlelight than the crystal of his glasses. The wrinkles that framed the sides of his eyes when he laughed were one of the few and rare proofs of the man’s testimonies. He was aging - something that he admitted to without fear of what it meant in the end, yet with a certain bitterness could be found in his voice all the same, if one were careful enough to hear.

“It is not a warning against knowledge, young Ekon.” He said, humour lacing his voice still, the edges of his lips a calm smile.

Jonathan recalled all and every time the man complained of not leaving here much, nor seeing the stars for long date, and how long it must have been since Usher had enjoyed company such as what Jonathan had been offering as of late; conversations and interviews that changed their host in the same frequency the man humoured him by offering him tea. Too many times, in fact, and Jonathan was yet to deny it, that trade off of questionnaires, to be answering as often as he asked. 

Thus why his words were surprising, albeit not too much. The Primate had told him after all that many matters were considered taboo and indiscrete for him to address, his choice of words only so to avoid stating upright that he would rather not tell, and would keep some of the Brotherhood’s secrecy from Jonathan. Yet, he didn’t think the man would be surprised that his unwillingness to speak wouldn’t be enough to dismiss the Doctor’s interest entirely. “The Strength.” The man said. 

Usher’s cards still awed him, somehow. The man refused to explain much to him, but he did like to speak, and would do so with just the slightest bit of incentive. It had been long since he last had a conversation, particularly with one of Jonathan’s  _ kind _ , enough that he had agreed to demystify his readings for the ever curious Doctor to understand his method - a trade, he had called it, the pay off for retrieving so many notes that he had come across in his wanderings.

He made a copy before returning them to Usher, but alas, he had retrieved to the Brotherhood many pieces that had been lost, either by missing members or taken by Priwen. Usher Talltree regarded them as invaluable pieces of history, evidence of theories that from anyone outside their occult studies, would call them pretentious madness. Jonathan, in turn, regarded them as the vague, distant symptoms of a greater disease, the context, pre-set and consequences of an ailment he was seeking to understand. Not the epidemic only, but also himself.

It wasn’t an even trade, he supposed. The value of those pieces were much higher than the tool he had been taught, but Jonathan came to the understanding that any knowledge was better than none at all. Not unlike these notes, as they rarely had answers, yet their content painted the landscape of the bigger picture, as important to a painting as the figurehead at its centre.

In either way, he welcomed the psychology behind the lesson on tarot. Each card was a bundle of symbols that could be connected to folklores and myths of nearly every major culture, granting them the advantage of being able to present a plot, a concept full of elements with common meanings that would naturally make connections on the observer’s mind regardless of their beliefs and cultural backgrounds. The answers cards produced, the information and concepts they presented, weren’t in the cards themselves but rather what one would interpret from their meanings. 

By all means, these cards should now look like colourful and less subjective Rorschach inkblots, yet he had seen those before, had played with them, his own answers and theories around other practitioners of the medical field, back when they were just published and made the news of every scientific community. But no answer, coming from an acquaintances’ experiment with the brand new method or from his own subconscious, were as precise as Usher’s technique.

And that was the point, the Primate had remarked. In history there were concealed cures, remedies and answers that the modern world had dismissed, regarded as artifacts of belief, but perhaps would be the most accurate depiction possible to frame an observable fact, regardless of science’s understanding of it or its newer methods to analyse the same item. There was no mystery to them anymore, not to their function, nor their effect - but between inkblots and cards, the Doctor had no shame to admit he had found his favourite tool of introspection.

Jonathan put down the teacup carefully, hearing it click against the matching saucer as his warm fingers picked up the card carefully. Blunt, square nails delicately scrapped one of the raised edges from the table, raising it to his palm. He saw it fit within his hand, not bigger than any playing deck of 52 pieces, not an inch of the painted card fitting out of his large palm. The painting was the eighth of its Arcana, called  _ The Strength _ ; a wondrous damsel, opening without effort the jaws of a lion. His thumb traced its surface a little, smoothing a wrinkle that must have been produced from folding once, surely an accident, yet it did little to fix the damage. “If you wish, I’ll return it to you.”

The offer at hand was not about the card, of course, but rather the blade that sat across Jonathan’s lap, an elegant sword with sharp quillons, pointed to the tip of the blade. Aggressive yet unassuming in its looks, but with a weight and solidness to it that Jonathan had never seen in sabres and decorative swords he had held before, be them for display only or relics of old. Those felt light and feeble, as if the Ekon held it with enough strength and desperation, it would break. But not this one. There was age to it, but not damage from time. Surely it had been tended to, by this Primate and the one before him and the one before that, and while the man hadn’t laid claim to the fine weapon, he had seemed far from pleased to find Jonathan standing with it in his hands.

He was never meant to find it, he was aware. Perhaps it was never expected of him or anyone to make the connection between the symbols concealed in so many notes and relics, scattered between two factions that didn’t look eye to eye for centuries now. Even if the notes held the hints, what man would have found all of them, and come across the doors of the secret itself? What sort of man could have stepped on ancient masonry and heard the minimal noise of stone against stone, a discrete mechanism setting whenever he applied his body weight to specific diamonds in an entryway? 

Only a noisy Ekon would have heard it and assumed it all. London was currently plagued with such a creature, and without fault, he had found it. But alas, he prized somewhat the casual conversations and vague relationship he had developed with the Primate of the Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole, enough that he would be willing to return it, with the shame and composure of a gentleman who accidentally took another man’s coat instead of his own in the way out. 

The true treasure concealed within that sliding door Usher could not take from him; it hadn’t been the blade, but rather the note that accompanied it. It had more names to add to what became a notebook of relic copies and loose notes, answers to the questions none of the Stole would answer him, some he doubted even they possessed it. He still had questions, so many of them, but in a single parchment, a many few of them had been solved, bringing some light to his treading in the dark. The blade would be wondrous to keep without a doubt - it surely was finer and swifter to swing than the hacksaw he had been wielding for so long. But alas, he was willing to return it, for the sake of diplomacy.

The Primate only shook his head, a sigh parting from his lips as he gathered his cards, the eighth still on Jonathan’s hand but he made no gesture to retrieve it. He resumed to shuffle them, mindless and carelessly this time, sometimes striking edges, his distraction evident, strong enough to fail the practice behind the movements. “No, I would have preferred it if you never had come across it in the first place. Too late for that now, I suppose.”

Jonathan would have taken offense on the man’s mistrust, if only he didn’t understand it whole-heartedly. An organisation as old and secretive as the Stole would be fierce on holding into its secrets, regardless of how trustworthy one could aspire to seem. He wasn’t a member, after all, and he hadn’t the desire of joining another club, not so fresh after the last one. It didn’t seem possible, anyway; Usher entertained him with answers the Doctor often already had shards of, spent time to amuse conversations, but not once had he treated the newborn as a possible member, even if he possibly already had more knowledge than many within its ranks.

He didn’t expect to join, no. But he did hope for a more precise analysis, now he had the facts on a parchment, he hoped for an explanation. It had been their trade, unspoken and unsung, their skeptic tarot; whatever Jonathan already knew, the Primate would elaborate, be the interpretation to the cards the Ekon brought him. He expected the same, now, even if it was clear that those were cards Usher hoped he would never draw.

“Keep it. The sword, and the Brotherhood’s secrets, Jonathan Reid.” He concluded, putting his deck aside once it had been shuffled enough, the raspy sound a comforting melody that now ceased, leaving him with only the rhythmic beat of the man’s heart. 

“I imagined you would want to keep it, if it is part of the tool to ban a dragon. I am to blame if you should call for the ban anytime soon - be it for me or somebody else.” The admittance was bittersweet, but necessary all the same. The main reason he had come here tonight hadn’t been to hand him the sword or to read his cards, although it was always very welcome. This night had a name and theme, a story which Usher was fully aware of now.

Edgar Swansea was now but a presence in Jonathan’s mind, not unlike a limb to move should he feel like reaching out to something that was within its reach; a limb to tense should he feel an ache, chew on, should he be restless. Like any limb of his, he was aware of its power, its strengths, aches and limitations. Where with Mary he had mistaken that awareness as part of the immense grief and guilt he carried, present even now, with Edgar he was a bit more enlightened as to what his weight meant to him.

Few choices had made him feel as doused in filth and blood as this one had. Never could he see a reason to make a Progeny again, even to drink he was wary, reserved his feeding for battle and it only, outside of it, he had developed compositions to treat Skal blood into something servisable, that wouldn’t quench the thirst but at the very least, keep his body from being entirely starved. After Mary, he wanted to make sure his blood remained as far away as possible from anyone living. He had questioned Redgrave’s order then, in front of the man himself, and afterwards, to Aloysios at his deathbed. 

He would spare London another beast like himself. Mary, the incarnation of kindness and gentleness herself, had snapped as if what she had been before meant nothing on the post-mortem. It shouldn’t have been so, it didn’t  _ need _ to be so. His world had changed, and Jonathan could understand the etymology of the word Ekon as he lived through it - he was but a vessel of what he once was, a mockery of that man, yet his mind was no less capable of emulating the behaviour that no longer felt natural, behaviour which that could be so easily forgotten on the shade of new needs and impulses. 

But humanity wasn’t entirely gone, not if he didn’t will it so. There was enough of it, enough should he look within his own heart. He would find it sailing desperately amidst stormy seas, William Turner’s  _ The Shipwreck _ , a gathering of measly rowboats caught in the grasp of walls of saltwater, as hard as stone. And yet, those vessels, survivors of the greater tragedy, would only surrender their struggle against waves if he permitted it. A survivor himself, the hull of the salvation boat would endure, if he spared it from meeting the blunt force of the waves whenever possible. If his grip remained steady on the frail, singular sail, even as the ropes bled his arms and saltwater blinded him, the boat wouldn’t fail him yet.

The storm wouldn’t ever end, that was the true ailment of his condition. It was every sane man’s desire to survive the storm long enough to see it pass, but in his case it wouldn’t. If it was but a matter of how long could he sail, then so be it. May his death come before his arms ever let go of the ropes - to survive was an ideal, not to sink, the true goal. 

He would not condemn anyone to the tragedy if he could help it - death was, by far, a more merciful fate. Yet, was it truly in his hands to decide?  _ You shall not play God _ . It should never be a Doctor’s decision, and yet it did fall to their hands, more often than not. And despite putting so much effort on treading as lightly as he could through his nights, sail as firmly as he could through these storms, his hold did waver countable times. 

Three names: Sean Hampton, Aloysius Dawson and Edgar Swansea. His triskelion of failure, composed of the best choices he believed he could do at the time, and yet, choices that had him still conscious through the rise of the sun, choices that had him wondering if his boat was already doomed to sink regardless of what he did from now on, from those three times his hold wavered and the hull was hit. Sean Hampton, whom he interfered and subjugated his will, broke part of the faith that was the only thing keeping the Saint from holding on his own ropes, just to have his way done, in what he believed was the easiest and safest procedure.

Aloysius, whom he believed wholeheartedly would do more harm to the city than he could ever do good, whose plans to make a wall would sacrifice the lives of many he called his patients, would endanger the healthy and ill both. He talked to the man until he was unafraid of death, yet it was no better than murder. Undeath wasn’t the cure for death, for there was no cure for it. It wasn’t a sickness, despite the fear and despair laced around it. Turning the man wouldn’t save him, would in fact endanger more people than ever before. Yet, he had denied the man so. A Doctor who denied treatment just because his patient promised to endanger others… It had never been his right to make that choice.

But he had done it. Something he had never done in war he had done now, alone as he was, he couldn’t be judge, jury and executioner, but knew there would be no judgement for those events if they came to happen. He was at war, but alone; he was gunman, physician and trooper, all in one. He didn’t pride himself on making the choice that despite seeming the best at the time, wasn’t his to make. But he was far more ashamed of his latest - Edgar.

Any Progeny of his could be a fierce and powerful immortal, that much he was aware, for he had faced Mary and he knew that there was little keeping him alive through that encounter, perhaps only his caution on wounding her being what kept him most watchful of her deadly blows. Had he fought like she did, driven by hate, he had no doubt that her well-fed might would have won over his starved, fearful and less-knowing self. Never again would be too soon to make a Progeny, even by accident.

Then, his words fell out of the window when he had looked at Edgar’s eyes and watched the man die slowly before him, ambers growing dim, fingers gripping his perforated lung and ribs, every word a struggle, a man daft by nature but boneless from shock. He admitted to his crimes with a remarkable aloofness - he was genial and distant emotionally in the same way he was kind; he did both with naturality, and not a speck of evil, be it in his intent or deliverance. The man was void of an emotional complexity, such being as deep as the saucer underneath his teacup. A brilliant scientist, but unattached from ethics, only intent differed him from a warlord, the result being the same.

By all means, he could see how him dying would have been a deserving fate, he could see how the Pembroke would move on slowly but another administrator would eventually be found, until the fate of the building was decided entirely. Perhaps closed finally for all the rules broken within its halls, all the malpractices Jonathan had seen happening and partially had been immoral to don’t file in and denounce. But Pembroke would move on. Lives would move on regardless of what became of Edgar now, he had already unleashed an epidemic upon the world and there was no way back from that. 

But alas, he was a friend. There was no easier way to explain the despair that surrounded him the moment he saw the man on the brink of death, saw the blood flooding his chest cavity, ruptured vessels and a bleeding lung, so much damage, and all he could think then was the same concern that had driven him with outstanding speed from a battle with McCullum to the Theatre once more. Edgar. Edgar with his kind eyes and odd humour, Edgar whom he could hear from the halls his monologues with his skull, his closest confidant. Edgar, whose ridiculous optimism and lightness was as warm as sunlight had once been.

An one-sided liking, perhaps, or just the only anchor Jonathan had found to cling to humanity and normalcy as he threaded into his dark undeath. Edgar didn’t exactly understand the depth of the harm he had caused, a screw less in his head perhaps, that made him even as a man, completely unbothered to hold the ropes of the rowboat that was humanity. Even before his death, his shipwreck, he hadn’t felt the urge to hold and row. 

Jonathan was fond of him, all the same. He hadn’t registered then, if Edgar would ever develop guilt for what he had done, nor if it was wise to turn the man in the first place. There was the terror of making a Progeny, as powerful and broken as Mary, but that was a fear evened out equally by the fear of losing such a sail of his new undead vessel, a crucial pillar of the house of gold and bones Jonathan now lived in.

He had been selfish. There must exist no need for humanity for one to feel liking, compassion and kinship to others. Even a monster would be capable of such, if himself could feel it with so much strength that it suffocated any other thought in his head. Compassion which cared little for ethics, for the needs of blood and morals, little mattered before it. It clung to the delusion that perhaps he could fix what there was possibly no fixing, an ailment he could cure, perhaps even the epidemic, but he couldn’t certainly cure a man’s lack of humanity, he could treat and hope, at best.

And so he did. There he spent the last days, seeing to Edgar, being his shadow to enforce that the man wouldn’t feed on civilians and patients, not without meeting his Maker’s blade before he even landed his lips against a neck. The man still didn’t quite understand the ferocity in which Jonathan was willing to enforce limitations to his actions, his mind a constant presence he kept his eyes on at all times, to intervene in case of pain or too much joy. He basked in the hypocrisy - he had loathed being judge and jury, and yet three times he had done so, and perhaps would do so again.

The hypocrisy of it bothered only himself, he thought. Edgar remained as excited as ever about his condition despite the passage of days, and himself drowned in the mournful sight of the Ekon he created. Not evil, no, he saw much more darkness within his own heart than he could ever see in Swansea, but he saw a creature without guilt or remorse, inhumane and proud of it. He existed happily and lightly, like an egret, unbothered about the terror the shadow of its wings and anything similar in shape brought to the fishes in a pond. He nearly envied him, in a way; an animal’s unbridled mindset might be comfortable to Edgar, but it would never be to Jonathan.

He wasn’t an animal, after all. Everything would be much easier if he was, he supposed.

Silence had reigned sovereign after his statement, and Jonathan was surprised to find it mirrored on Usher before him. That himself slid into his thoughts and self-loathing was unsurprising, but that the man had granted him the silence to do so seemed odd, specially to raise his eyes and be met with the Primate’s dark own, pupils and irises seamless in their dark blend even for Jonathan’s keen eyes. 

What ran in the man’s mind was beyond his reach, and despite his eagerness to make questions, this was not one of those easy on the tongue. He liked the seclusion of his thoughts, and assumed so did Usher, even though there would be no harm in asking, not when the Primate was so comfortable and used to telling the Doctor a flat  _ no _ . “Keep it. If I must call for the ban of a dragon, this blade won’t do much against it, I’m afraid. It's more of a relic now.”

Jonathan liked the weight of the blade more than he liked any other - the hacksaw had been his weapon of choice for the familiarity of it, no other weapon had quite interested him as much, despite him coming across a variety of them. But now with such a fine blade on his grasp, he deluded himself the thought that he would feel less tempted to rely on his blood and claws from any threat that he came across.

That blood of his, powerful enough to be spilled on the floor and lure in all the Skals of the vicinity and bring foreign Ekons to the outskirts of Pembroke. His blood that sung to him during his most desperate hours, red fingers that pressured at his wounds while both of his remained firm on the handles of his hacksaw. His blood, yet, something else entirely that wasn’t just Jonathan alone.

If he had just the faintest bit more of faith, he would perhaps like to believe he was possessed, it was far more comforting to have an answer for what he had, instead of loose facts, unexplained and impossible to make sense of. His blood that was his, for it ran in his veins, but was also something else entirely. It was a weapon, when Jonathan required it so, it was songs and murmured prophecies before the arrival of dawn; it was a horned being, when it choose to present itself, and it spoke in a hushed, comforting tone regardless of the outbursts Jonathan could choose to hand it.

He couldn’t make a sense of what that entity was, but he understood it was his Maker. It too liked to talk, albeit the meaning of its words being often lost on Jonathan’s ears, with so much of it spoken in an unclear manner. Or rather, as he was slowly coming to find out, oftentimes his questions were answered in truths Jonathan denied. It spared him answers he could find on his own, but was patient to speak, even if Jonathan would not understand a thing. 

Jonathan hated it, whatever being it was. Be it a god or demon, but he couldn’t draw a line anymore where it ended and where he began, what was a bleeding wound and what were red fingers, pressing a bleeding and hoping to cease an hemorrhage while he fought.

He couldn’t tell where the line had faded, that made him now willing to treat tarot with the same curiosity and respect he treated Rorscharch’s test, and made him see an antidote in a medieval vampire’s memoirs. That line had faded, and that blood was foreign, but him as well. The entity, the hunger, the unaging body Mary had denied and the words of fate in stars and ancient curses. It was him. And Jonathan was part of that being now, like Edgar was a limb of his. 

The impossible meet up of two worlds, the living paradox. He hated it, but embraced it, and hated to feel relief that he had embraced it. To accept both this new reality like he accepted everything he was before, was to turn his survival in this rowboat into a life of sorts; while he held both ropes, both truths, he could live, steer the rowboat a little, at least to preserve it within possibility amidst the storm. 

“I still ought to ask if you’re certain. You might need it. Edgar now has his eyes set on the position of Primate… You might need to call for a ban.” Jonathan said, his nostrils flaring at the displeasure the admittance brought him.

To turn Edgar felt more often than not a way to punish himself, for where Edgar lacked the guilt to weigh his actions and consequences, Jonathan did so for both, and carried the guilt Edgar didn’t. He felt responsible, for any life he took and any nuisance Edgar could ever be. Ashamed and responsible for the man, that was what he was now. For once, he could see why and how an Ekon might abandon anything it sired, especially if it was a Skal. The shame was biochemical without a doubt. The protectiveness and responsibility was instinctive. As if he already didn’t have enough on his plate as it was. 

It hurt to think of Edgar in such a way. But his mind was a temple he could howl in his thoughts and within it, he was still safe and unheard.

“Has he told you that? How do you know?” Usher asked carefully, and Jonathan blinked his eyes when he remembered to do so. Around Usher, he tended to forget with remarkable ease the things he now had to voluntarily coerce out of himself. To blink, to breathe, to move, in a while or another, now and then. 

He didn’t need to do so, but he brought back a habit from when he was alive; he carefully ran his thumb against the shell of an ear, as if soothing an itch against his Woolnerian Tip. He would call it irony and coincidence that he was born with a congenital anomaly that ages ago was connected to witchcraft, for calling it anything else would be a strain too great on his now fragile skepticism. The gesture still soothed, as it had done in life.

“He hasn’t told me, no.” He answered, his thumb massaging the discrete point before he let go of it entirely. “The source of this knowledge is more esoteric than your tarot and stars, I think. But I still take it as true.”

Few rare times did he say anything that interested Usher Talltree, often it was the other way around. Jonathan would often catch something in a sentence and proceed to prod and ask, require further detail, follow the hint like a trail of blood. It was unnatural to see the man’s eyes spark, his heart beat faster within his chest, fear or thrill, impossible to tell from so little, but even so he strained his tongue. He knew Jonathan wouldn’t tell. The Doctor shouldn’t feel morbidly pleased at the relatable distress, but he did. 

“Very well. Even so, there won’t be need for the sword, the ban of the dragon won’t be needed for Edgar, it never will. He doesn't have what it takes to become a dragon, not like you do.” The Primate stated, leaning forward to remove the eighth card from the Ekon's hand, plucking it out from his palm that had remained this whole time as still as he had left it. He hadn’t felt the need to move it, he never did, and to be honest he might have forgotten it entirely. 

Usher’s words had his complete attention. From what he had read in all those notes and pieces of books, scattered pages of unnamed tomes, he had read a few things about the dragon the Brotherhood had deeply entangled in its story. The latest piece, acquired with the sword, was an intimate and more factible shard of that tale. The Recollections of Paulus Aurelianus described traits and events too close to what Jonathan knew from his own experiences. The Horned Trickster, the dragon he spoke of, had been a vampire, a man touched by that fabled creature that became advisor to the King himself. He needed to know more. 

Jonathan might have grown particularly slick when the matter was to uncover secrets and coerce admittances, but it wasn’t smooth enough to coerce more of Usher than the man was ever willing to share. Unspoken trade offs, those conversations of theirs. But not everything was on the table for bargaining. He would receive nothing else about that sentence, he knew. The Ekon filled his lungs without need, feeling his chest widen under his clothes before he breathed out a sigh. 

“Your lack of information cost me time and effort. If you had told me about the Tear of Angels sooner, I could have already acted.” Not everything was up for trade, he knew, but the Doctor couldn’t help but to feel frustrated over it all the same. Those games they enjoyed, evenings with cards and tea, conversations on the esoteric and the experimental as if they were scholars killing time during summer and not in the brink of events greater than any of them. 

He respected Usher’s secrecy and loyalty, but as he came to find William's memoirs, he couldn’t help but to think his best bet had been under his nose for far too long. Edgar had sworn he hadn’t a clue of what he spoke of when he had explained, and he had no reason to doubt his Progeny. Edgar didn’t lie to him, not anymore. His words were always true, be them in mournful whispers or excited conclusions, as if he believed Jonathan would force the truth out of him if he found necessary.

Edgar was well aware that Jonathan wasn’t pleased with him. He was working on mending that, he could see it. Make himself trustworthy, at times even useful. He had no reason to doubt his Progeny, as difficult as it might be to think of him in any way unbiased and distant from his tainted heart. 

Similarly, it could grow to a strain, to maintain a civil relationship with Usher now, knowing the man had such crucial knowledge in his hands and had never even hinted to it, nevermind the lives at the stake, what seemed to matter to him were the secrets of his Order, and them alone. Such was difficult to swallow, but Jonathan put effort on the task. If not details on the Recollections, on the Tear of Angels at least he ought to hear some clarification.

Instead, Usher offered him words that weren’t unlike the blow of a blunt instrument. “Who's to say you're the one to defeat the Disaster? There was no sign it would be you.”

It struck Jonathan then that he knew. Usher Talltree must be aware, to some extent, that there was a Disaster incoming. For whatever reason it existed, and for whatever reason it unleashed itself on the land as it did, it mattered little. What mattered and the Primate knew, like the mysterious entity knew, was that the land called for a champion to bring it down. Where Usher concealed much, the entity spoke freely of all these things and they came to make sense only much later.

It had called him so, its champion, for whatever reason it chose and whatever reason there must be one. Even if he had denied it, he would have to be blind to don’t see that was what he had become; he wielded the entity’s blood as his own, it made them one. He pursued an end to the epidemic for he had given his word to Mary, for it was the right thing to do, and because it seemed he was the only one in this exact moment capable of doing so. He hadn’t questioned the observable route before him - win or lose, that was where he was going. To face a Disaster, take a role in a prophecy he didn’t believe in. 

Usher knew more of it than himself. But Jonathan wasn’t willing to feign ignorance of part of it. His throat felt dry, from as many reasons as the Brotherhood had secrets. They ranged from thirst to anger, lathing the outrage he felt from the implication of the Primate’s words. As if he had asked to be in the middle of this, to see so much death and ruin spring around himself as if only a barren wasteland could produce the spearpoint of a winning weapon. 

He wouldn’t have assumed the responsibility if it could have been another. He wouldn’t have played God if he could have avoided it. But if Usher saw no signs that it was him walking down this route, how could Jonathan only see those? “Everyone to do so has been an immortal, as an example.”

Went unsaid that not only immortal, they shared more similarities than simply the immortal blood. Being handpicked the greatest of them, perhaps. However, there was no need to specify it, not when Usher seemed to have it on the point of his tongue far more than himself. It had been the Primate himself to say only a moment ago that he was far more Dragon than Edgar could ever be. More than once had notes and pieces of history brought up the presence of such a beast, not as an animal but rather a metaphor for a kind of immortal that Jonathan didn’t need a mirror to see in himself. 

“An immortal before, an immortal after, does it matter?” Usher said with a wave of his hand, as if to dismiss the weight of his words entirely. It didn’t do much. “The order of events sometimes are lost through time. By all means, McCullum had a head start.” 

McCullum. Jonathan was surprised by the Primate’s words, but as he let them board the vessel of his thoughts, the more it seemed like a reasonable assumption, making him feel as if his conclusions so far had been solely out of vanity and a crisis of unforeseeable narcissism. By all means and reasons, it could have been McCullum indeed.

The man proceeded from a lineage of vampire hunters like a knight would have in older times. His story was not too different from what he could recall and had salvaged about the fabled William Marshall, brave and pure of heart, even if the practicalities of his sovereign’s crusade were anything but. The Guard of Priwen was far from pure - Jonathan had come across its cruelty and mistakes, the theft it resorted to so to fund itself, among other crimes. It was a crusade against the supernatural, with all its terrors, cruelty and genocide of the innocent. 

Nonetheless, he had faced McCullum, heard him talk, read his notes and letters, the few he had come across. The man did what he could, in the trade he had been taught. If he was a Doctor and immortal, without shadow of doubt Jonathan would have seen him repeating his own actions, perhaps even doing better than himself. The Lionhearted Leader of the Guard of Priwen had been a hunter before, and as a hunter he would face an epidemic of Skals, exactly like a knight and king had done in ages to pass.

Enlightenment was an odd thing, he supposed. The aftertaste of an epiphany was a rumbling static that percorred the length of his nerves, down to the tip of his fingers, as if struck by electricity. By all means he now could see it, through Usher’s side of the looking glass, how between him and McCullum, there was one clear Arthur repeating history, as prophecy said he would.

There was such an Arthur in London, a knight who had spent most of his life working on the strength of his sword arm and basking in the faith that should the wellness of Britain come down to laying down his life, he would fall without a second thought. He raised an army behind him, gathered a paramilitia when all able-bodied men were still holding at bay the shivers of the war on the continent. This new war, in the backyard of their own homes, meant far more than any campaign overseas. Jonathan knew it, for he felt as much in his own heart, and knew he wasn’t the only one.

Years had seen McCullum into a seasoned hunter, well-versed in his trade and prepared for this war that Jonathan fell face first on, stumbling his steps and commiting mistakes McCullum would have not. He had the memoirs in his hands, the means to pursue them, and perhaps had already attempted such if the halls of the Ascalon Club were any proof of such an attempt to produce the one antidote of legend that the man must be already aware of. It had been in Priwen’s possession, after all. McCullum was a brute but far from ignorant, if his resourcefulness at Pembroke’s attic was anything to go by. 

If an Arthur was needed at every turn of the age to put an end to a Disaster, who would that be in this era if not for McCullum? He was a warrior, where Jonathan was a physician and researcher. He did it for better reason than Jonathan’s guilt-fueled intents, aspiration of ceasing an epidemic balanced by a mowing despise over what had happened to him, megalomaniac in his imposed suffering that seemed to give him an artificial higher moral ground, so far as to think less of Edgar for not doing the same to himself. 

If he was to take prophecy as accurate, which it had frighteningly been so far, it could only have been McCullum. By all means and looks, it should have been McCullum. But it wasn’t, after all.

“I am not Arthur. But I still need to face this threat.” He said while Usher, who had resumed shuffling his deck of cards, lifted his head from the table to meet his eyes with a warm, kind smile. “That is true. Time is running out and you should fly, Emrys.”

The Doctor had nothing else to ask for tonight, no. His fingers laced around the hilt of the sword, holding it by his side as he stood from the box he used as a makeshift bench, the only seat Usher had slid his way when he first walked into the mausoleum. He nodded to the Primate of the Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole in a simple, solemn gesture. His words confirmed much, and if only Jonathan had the time, he would have spent it dwelling further on what he had uncovered.

But there was no time, not anymore. What he had was a broken prophecy, preparations to make and a folklorical antidote to produce, and he would follow them both, wield the shammanical cure against the epidemic until science caught up - and it would catch up someday, he had no doubt. But while he desperately wanted to, there wasn’t time to question it, no. 

He would, someday. In a year or in a thousand he would uncover this. Time was at his side, and he would make sense of what he had no choice but to call fate as of now. In the absence of Rorschach’s explanation, he would trust the tarot. And he hoped, thoroughly hoped, that like in that case, either route would see to the same place.

_ The Strength _ was the card he had drawn tonight, and it symbolised to win over a lion with gentleness, earn it’s trust, and part its jaws not through force but through everlasting compassion. He wondered where was it that he would need this kind of strength - was it a hint to something he should be mindful of, or a warning about possible lack of it?

Wield both, either way. Heed by both. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I think myself so genial for naming the chapters “I, ArthurMerlin” for it's a numeral, but sounds like “Aye (me), Arthur/Merlin”. It is so dumb and basic yet I feel like the brightest bulb in the store doing so;
> 
> \- The way I perceive Jonathan’s and Edgar’s relationship is a tangle of one-sides. One sided friendship and need for normalcy, against one sided adoration, fear and possibly attraction if you do ship them. It's interesting, either way, and I hope to dwell (more) on it sometime.
> 
> \- Myrddin freeform, and yes he made himself more present here than he did in canon.
> 
> \- God willing I won’t make anything as long as this ever again. If this is confusing, I'm sorry, its the best I can do. Hopefully it will make more sense with time. 
> 
> \- Comment if you want - if you don’t like commenting, you can hit me up on my Twitter (@CDNM_Herja) or Instagram (@cdnm_herja) if you want. I don’t mind either, and you might be reading this on your phone and be too lazy to log in in AO3, which is a mood and I relate.


	3. The Round Table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to McCullum! More dynamism, now that we are ready to sail. Buckle up, kiddos.  
> You’re in the third chapter now - consider leaving your opinion, criticism or praise? Not necessary, of course, but highly appreciated!

  
  


Uneven cobblestone created small pockets, hollows and dents, that filled steadily with the light pour of rainwater; drop by drop, rain slid over wet stone to gather and fill every crevice it could find, in the absence of earth to absorb it from sight.

He shouldn’t be surprised to find that if he sought peace and quiet, it would not be given to him for long. If it was given, it was only so to taunt him with its pleasantness, before reaping it out of him. He ought to fight for all things he earned to have, fight for all things he saw right, and all things that were minimal. Nothing was freely given, apparently, and the peace he had found at the Stonebridge had lasted as long as it took dusk to settle.

Afterwards, the night coated the sky with dark clouds, filling his ears with the noise of London’s infamous light downpour, accompanied by the howls of Skals in the distance, it interrupted any train of thought he might have planned to dwell in depth. The small window of peace he had found during orange daylight hadn’t lasted at all. To remain here, hoping for more of it somehow, was only a display of his excessive stubbornness.

Yet, he stayed. The water might ruin his crossbow, he mused distantly; the bow was sensitive to humidity, and the Guard of Priwen wasn’t currently abundant with resources. To replace pieces was to take a weapon from the hands of one of his men so to give it to himself, and the thought never sat well with him. It was partially the reason why he still fought with sword and bow, despite the advancements of technology and the income of arms to the nation. They employed everything from flame-throwers to mist-blowers, yet there wasn’t enough for every man and woman as he wished there was.

He should by all means preserve his weapon. But he didn’t budge from where he stood. Carl Eldritch’s tombstone had aged, he noted, and so had Geoffrey. Stains from its top showed that despite whatever effort there must have been done to keep the tombstone, the year of epidemic and quarantine was enough to make it fall into some degrees of disrepair. It bleached where birds perched, and weeds were swallowing the edges of the stone, as if threatening to cover it someday soon. 

The epidemic was doing similarly everywhere, making corpses, rot, moss and weed swallow buildings, streets and window sills without the people to keep abandonment at bay. Crows were multiplying rampantly over the feasts offered, and some streets had as many rats as there were individual cobblestones. London was decaying underneath it all - the epidemic had lasted too long, he supposed. How much longer could it go before it was irreversible? Part of him believed it already was past such a point. No longer would he walk through London and don’t see the losses the epidemic had brought. It would never be what it once was, not to speak of the human loss of it all.

Perhaps it was all a war already lost. The thought nearly made him laugh - Carl wouldn’t have allowed him to finish that sentence if he had ever dared to voice such a thing before the man. His faith and courage were something unique, balanced with some degree of nihilism that saw evil in all corners and crevices of the world, combined with an understanding that their effort against it was the only thing holding it at bay. His war was not to bring light, but to keep shadow at bay, and even so it was no less important of a battle. 

The devil might be stronger than men, as God willed it, but men’s will would prevail. Geoffrey inherited the Guard of Priwen and with it, that same duty to never falter his will. He liked to believe he never failed it.

“Good evening, Vampire Hunter.” Alas, Geoffrey might believe whatever, but he was currently haunted by proof of otherwise. 

He had brought a bit more of noise to Geoffrey’s already failed silence with the presence of a large, pitch black umbrella, that made the raindrops sound louder but comfortingly muffled against the cloth of the item, perched casually on the Doctor’s tall shoulder.

It was nighttime, Jonathan’s reign by all means, all roads, streets and passages were open and crystal clear for him, but for Geoffrey, he had to blink to make some sense of the dark figure next to him. The West End Doctor was as immaculate as someone of his upbringing often looked like, fine clothes unstained, despite him having seen and heard of the miasma of blood and death the Doctor could leave in his wake - at the very least, a man that walked through Whitechapel was expected to have the hems of his pants stained, a leech was expected to have bloodstains on his collar.

The Doctor had nothing of the sort in his presentation. Even the rainwater seemed unwelcome to disturb his composure. All synthetic, Geoffrey knew, for this was not a man but a beast, and emulated anything from calmness and politeness, like a parrot that would mimic crows to avoid being pursued. In the dark shade of his umbrella, the beard that framed his face seemed as black as night against his undeath parlour - his eyes torched, bright and cool, a gelid blue that betrayed the bloodied red it could sport.

His voice was not unlike that same rain; both a bother on Geoffrey’s evening, a pretense of comfort and steadiness, of a low and rumbling ease. Rain was no comfort when it was a distraction to his thoughts. Rain was damage to ceilings, to the floor of the poor, and the very veil of noise that hid a predator that wouldn’t miss a chance to ambush him, now that it couldn’t be heard. Reid was all these things and more, a maelstrom in fine wear; if Geoffrey ever saw the devil, it would be dressed like him. 

“Are you here to end me, leech?” He asked, his lungs filling with air to raise the head he had held low for most of the evening. He did not forget the danger Reid was, not at all the threat his kind was. His hand earned to make a move, reach to the sword on his side, draw it quickly, as fast as a bolt. It remained perfectly still, away from the hilt. “You’ll find I’ll not be killed easily.”

He didn’t forget, for not even a moment, the threat that stood before him. But for some goddamn woe of this world, he did not feel threatened, nor in danger. He could only but observe the discrete movement of the Doctor’s arm, holding out in an angle so now his umbrella shielded them both from the rain. As unwavering, straight to the point, and nonchalant as ever, he spoke: “Not at all, McCullum. I am here because I need you.”

Geoffrey didn’t feel threatened for there wasn’t a threat. There was no liking that he could harbour towards Reid, no, regardless of the awareness that he was not in danger right now. He was facing a beast, no different from any other rabid animal he had ever faced and put down, regardless of the composure in which the Doctor carried himself, the efforts he made to bring medicine to the poor citizens of the East End. Come dawn, none of it mattered. It was a woeful reality, but a gruesome and nihilistic truth as well. 

It was inevitable that they all fell from grace. Mattered little the willpower they dedicated towards starving themselves, staying away from blood, it was meant to be so that the devil was stronger than men and none of them could hope to resist that craving for long. He had seen it with his own eyes, countless times before. Good men and women, the best in fact, minds much stronger than his own, they all inevitably fell to their natures. It was disheartening, but not too different from the fate of any of the Guard of Priwen. Any effort, any victory, any achievement, it was not to bring light.

In the dark, it was all but a matter of time until they were consumed by the lurking darkness. They fought not to brighten, but to keep the shadows at bay just one night longer. He would like to believe that there was the same intent behind Reid’s actions, and it was the very reason why the leech has spared him at the hospital, but he couldn’t do so.

He was too powerful, for one. Vampires had their strength directly connected to their lineage, the amount of blood they ingested, the lives they took, while their behaviour in a fight was directly connected to instinct. Their façade would fall quickly if they were cornered and in danger. The humans they were so eager to spend ages grooming fell quickly when they had need for a sudden burst of strength. Reid had held back from battling him with all he had in store, which would be impossible, if he didn’t have a much greater goal in mind. And all he had in store, the mangling death he had spared Geoffrey of, was all but a testament of the power he was pursuing and piling, saving in a cabinet, unworthy of employing against Geoffrey. There was no saint behind those eyes, nor abstinence the blood of one. 

He couldn’t trust a leech, obviously, but Reid even less. His game was something else entirely that Geoffrey admittedly couldn’t put a finger on, despite the beast seeming as transparent as he had ever done; eyes as pale and clear as a West End park’s pond, his expression harbouring a discrete furrow of his brows, as if he was the one with a mystery in his hands, not Geoffrey.

Maybe the Hunter would never understand fully this one particular leech, nor why he had been spared. It irritated him, even now; the concept of fighting for show was unthinkable. A wolf didn’t waste energy chasing prey for sport, nor did leeches or hunters, both had a goal every time they fought. He couldn’t imagine Reid fighting as he had done, taking as much damage as he did, without having a goal set in his mind that made it all worth it, from the moment he entered that attic to the moment he left. Unwillingness wasn't an excuse enough, even if Geoffrey hadn’t given him the choice. 

But if one mystery he couldn’t solve, at least he could entertain the answer of another. His eyes circled the fraction of the Cemetery they were in - being alone with him, underneath his umbrella, it felt like another world, apart from the woes of the rest. Like so, this interaction felt alien in its ease, wrong in its quiet comfort, much like the very rain, harmful to his goals yet offensively soothing to his ears. Maybe whatever words shared and events come to happen, would remain here, with only the dead for witness.

Oh, how one particular dead must despise him so. “I’m intrigued. Speak up, then.”

He crossed his arms, some of the raindrops caught on his jacket coming to slide down the fabric and the wrinkles on the surface, only to curl around his forearms and wet even further the front of his waistcoat. What mattered was that his crossbow and arm were no longer under the rain. His eyes remained trained on the leech next to him, and he didn’t miss the unfurl of his features, lightening up the man’s face as if instead of a beast, Geoffrey was observing the opening of the shell of a clock, catching sight of the spotless, glinting machinery underneath.

Bright and devious, Reid had machinations concealed in his eyes alright. Intelligence and sharpness, the very machinery that had conducted, alone, an investigation of his own. Leech or not, if Geoffrey’s digging was to be trusted, the man had been genial in life. The most dangerous monsters had been so. “I need the blood of a King, the blood of Arthur. I am certain that you possess it and I must have it.”

Preposterous. Geoffrey had half a mind to roll his eyes and huff. “The Guard’s most sacred and precious relic? Why would you…”

It dawned on him soon after, of course. Reid had, after all, been involved with this epidemic since the Guard had caught wind of him; an escaping leech at Southwark, whom they witnessed killing a woman minutes before dawn. A lot had been uncovered since then, a lot had been found - the Guard currently might be more of a paramilitia than it had ever been since the last Great Hunt, but it never forgot the trade it had employed in the last centuries since then. 

It observed, pursued, investigated and uncovered the devils where they hid, for their prey was elusive and clever, and they ought to be even more. Carl had never been one to hesitate to employ all the tools at hand to do what needed to be done, wait as long as needed, bribe the hands that must be bribed. They would not kill men, that was their founding stone, and to circle around that pillar they were resourceful and patient. 

Doctor Jonathan Reid was new, that they knew. Not too long ago, not long at all, he had been a newborn in Southwark, killing a woman they uncovered to be his very own sister under lamplight, at the foot of a mass grave. The telltale of a newborn, who stumbled his way and cleared a Skal den by the docks before being picked by Swansea, enrolled as a staff member of the Pembroke. At first, it was difficult to connect the two dots - Pembroke’s new lead surgeon and haematologist and the leech that had cleared the Skal den at one of the warehouses, leaving behind only its sick choice of decoration and its corpse as sign of its presence there.

Time had taken its toll and no odd deaths had been registered around the Pembroke or Whitechapel - instead, only words of a resigning Nurse, now fully dedicated to her illegal infirmary that more than once, tended to one of his men when they stumbled by. Pembroke’s new surgeon was known for making intensive night shifts, from dusk to dawn, and finding time before daylight to distribute medicine in the poorer parts of town, a refreshing sight to the abandoned poor of London. The Sad Saint, a local priest by the looks of it, had spent time at the Pembroke but made a speedy recovery and was once more tending to his flock at the Docks. 

None of the leech deaths that he wished could have been connected to Reid truly did stick - wherever he went, the man had always been confirmed to be somewhere else when the body dropped into the light. Geoffrey had to see him with his own eyes to make the connection, and from there on, connect his involvement with Swansea. The Administrator was shady, as were all those of the Brotherhood, and his suspicions proved themselves right. He had proof that the man was responsible over the epidemic, even if they never got a confession. Desperation to see an end to it brought him to agree to rougher questioning, but even so, there wasn’t a word of it or of William Marshall’s involvement before Reid freed the man.

Reid delivered a rescue mission like the few deaths that he could connect to the Doctor. Never a civilian, never someone who trusted him, like leeches liked them best. He killed like a Vulkod - corpses cut to shreds, quick and vicious, turning alleyways into slaughterhouses, wherein the flesh available had been properly bled before discarded. A Vulkod would have most certainly eaten the flesh and left behind pools of blood, but those were minimal in Reid’s wake. As if upon cutting and tearing, blood could evaporate in contact with air, most drops never meeting the ground but gone to another pitch instead.

The Guard rarely was found in such a state, but there had been a few cases, particularly those of ambushes. Skals, however, were actively sought out, for the fine West End Doctor apparently had a taste for the most primal and fetid type of prey. If Geoffrey wasn’t such an experienced Hunter, it would have been difficult to imagine it even now, with the serene, collected figure of the beast only a step away from him. But what his eyes saw once, he did never forget. Red and slitted, a beast surrounded in blood, the devil and the sacrifice, both in one. 

He had all reason to believe him to be Marshall’s Progeny, working alongside Swansea to produce another epidemic, for the once vampire knight’s morbid pleasure. But now, that theory was coming to dust. He had no solution to it, even when he believed in it wholeheartedly - would kill him or Marshall even do anything to cease the epidemic? He doubted it. If it was Reid’s doing, he wouldn’t be putting down an Ichor such as Doris, but rather defending her personally. It wasn’t what he had witnessed - unlike their fight, Reid hadn’t spared any efforts to put her down. 

“Ah, you found Marshall’s memoirs. I should have destroyed that book.” Geoffrey stated, with no small amount of distaste for it. How much of that book could be used, he didn’t know. Plenty of it was folklore, and the Guard had their own way of developing methods to put down leeches, enough that they could afford to burn down anything related to the pests, in hopes to disorientate them even further. Unaware how to commune with one another, how to meet and how to organise themselves, they were easier prey.

There was intelligence to the fire on the Library of Alexandria, even if the Brotherhood didn’t see it so. Not that their moral served as any compass worth its weight - they were apologists, empowering beasts, keeping their secrets. How many innocents had died because of it? Geoffrey couldn’t stand by it, none of it. Yet, the world seemed far less black and white, the more he walked through it. For here he was, standing next to a leech, held at a stalemate while an epidemic roared, and while it wound to admit, perhaps the beast was not to blame for it, and currently he was left with no leads to chase.

“Let us be grateful that you did not.” Reid said, his eyes parting from him to look at one of the gravestones. He accompanied the movement of his pupils, and found the leech to be reading. Was he looking for someone he might know among these names? “I need the antidote to save the city.”

The antidote was beyond Geoffrey’s reach, he must know. William Marshall’s blood was unobtainable, for there was no word of the vampire knight as far as knew. The closest he had, and such was only a rumour, was that Ascalon perhaps owned such a relic, but it was not a rumour trustworthy enough to make a push to its halls unprepared - when he had done so, had been a well-measured effort, a blow to take over the Club when it supposedly was low on numbers. To take from them such a headquarters would have been a wondrous victory to Priwen. Despite his best preparations, that had failed. 

Still, they were cornered. They didn’t leave the club unguarded often, had cut short balls and events, under the pretence of being mindful of the epidemic. They were beasts in fear, and time would see the Guard with an even better plan to make a move there once again. For now, they played chess on the streets of the West End; a black king at the Club, a white king at the Finsbury Theatre. Geoffrey was flexible and would move his king as he needed - Redgrave was a conservative player, and would keep his king unmovable until he couldn’t anymore. Geoffrey would hand him a checkmate at his king’s original house.

But that seemed an unimportant game now, nor one that he would be able to afford for much longer. The number of beasts in the streets only increased every day. The Guard’s numbers could only increase so much with recruiting - not enough to supply the losses. At this rate, only defeat was foreseeable. The night was closing in, how much longer would Priwen keep the shadows at bay? 

Apparently, Reid had some light to spare. Those eyes seemed to burn in the dark, the machinery within turning furbished silver cogs quickly - Geoffrey was hesitant to believe that the leech could have a plan but those eyes lacked any of the uncertainty the Hunter had. “It is within me to take your words as truth. I want to, but I must know more. What precisely are your plans?”

Was the antidote of legend truly the answer? That piece of folklore that just sat around the Guard’s relics for years on end, had the answer been there all this time? And even so, what would one flask do against an infected city? Geoffrey was no Doctor nor Alchemist, he didn’t see how such a recipe could do anything besides giving a single person immunity against the disease, even that being highly debatable. Maybe his scowl translated enough of his disbelief to the leech, for he found a matching frown adorning his features a moment later, Reid raising his fingers to clasp both hands on the handle of his umbrella. 

“I have found the carrier, McCullum. The infection’s source.” He explained, his voice carrying a poorly veiled heat - the beast was thrilled by his findings, or perhaps for what was to come. “It may be science or some supernatural power that is responsible for all of this, but I will harness either, or both, to end the epidemic.”

In no syllable of it did Reid sound reasonable, or sane, but Geoffrey couldn’t bring himself to question him. No, the leech’s eyes bore holes through him, a midnight sun. They might be fated to roam the night, keeping the shadows at bay until it wasn’t possible anymore, true. But the fire of one’s first nights always burned stronger, shone brighter. There was no shortage of heat and willpower in Reid, dead or otherwise, and Geoffrey found himself believing him and despising himself for it. 

“A vampire doctor. My God, you are a terrifying creature, Jonathan Emmet Reid.” He muttered, feeling the pressure on his molars as he ground his teeth, words nearly a hiss. As if Doctors weren’t mad and dangerous creatures on their own, traipsing with the monster that was the newest technology, working on men’s bodies as if they were machinery to tweak, break and rebuild. This whole epidemic was the fault of a Doctor, after all, and Geoffrey wouldn’t forget that so soon. 

And a vampire doctor, of all things, would bring an end to it. The world was truly coming to an end. But despite where he looked, he saw no other hope for this cursed city. From medicine it was born, by medicine killed. Or half of both, wielded by a being that too was half of both. He recalled rather freshly Reid’s words back at the attic at Pembroke. Geoffrey had been hurt and exhausted, but not unconscious. He hadn’t missed his words of choice then, nor the solidary arm he had offered to help him stand, even if he had hoped to forget so it would haunt him less.

_ Not enemies _ . The leech had been sure since the beginning that they weren’t to fight and stood by that notion. What a brave, albeit foolish man. 

“...Not enemies. Maybe that is so.” Geoffrey found himself muttering, his eyes returning to the tombstone before him, as he tightened the cross of his arms where they were folded. This outcome displeased him, notably, and stung the worst, leaving on his tongue a bitter taste of hypocrisy. 

He hated vampires, loathed the beasts, and would adore the see them all gone from the face of the world, along with them, all these dangers in the dark that reaped men and women in the middle of the night, tore families and towns apart, with no discrimination whatsoever. But alas, the hypocrisy he basked on now, he deserved every ache of it. God was merciful, for not having Carl alive right now to witness the distaste of his successor trusting such a beast, believing in his good will. But it was in his heart to trust.

“So be it, then. I see no other hope for this city.” And trust he would. “What is the plan?”

Reid seemed surprised when the Hunter met his eyes, silence taking over the leech who, reportedly, was chatty enough to have met and talked to every civilian from Stonebridge to Southwark and be in their neutral to good graces, somehow. Perhaps in the same way Geoffrey had never expected himself to trust such a creature, Reid wasn’t expecting such a question in turn. But he lost no less of that edge in his eyes. 

“The plan?” He repeated, ever so polite, as if begging a pardon. The ridiculous, posh creature. Geoffrey felt the hairs on the nape of his neck bristling. “Yes, leech, the plan. I will get you Arthur’s blood, but what about the rest of the recipe? You have them already?”

To that, Reid shook his head slowly. “No. I will get some insulin at Pembroke, then go after a drop of Marshall’s blood. I have reason to believe Lord Redgrave possesses it. It will not be easy to acquire; his wish to see me dead rivals only your own.”

An interesting commentary, especially when there had been reports of Reid having been sighted entering and exiting the Club a few times. He had assumed that, as Marshall’s offspring and all, the Club would be naturally his second home; he must have been made in these halls in fact, dropped in Southwark by accident. An enemy of Ascalon, however, was as bewildering of a thought as to think Reid might be on better terms with the Guard than with his own brethren. 

“I have yet to fetch Arthur's blood.” Geoffrey stated; clearly he had no reason to bring such a relic with himself to the Cemetery, it was as safe as it could be, hidden in the basement of the Finsbury Theatre, heavily guarded. It wasn’t so safe now that he thought of it - it had been where they brought Swansea and Reid had broken him out of it with the ease he cut through infested warehouses. “You will need two drops for two doses, won’t you?”

The lack of response made the rain seem louder as it prickled against the umbrella, making the Hunter seek out those pale eyes in the shade once again. Jonathan only stared back at him, pale and vacant like the mourning angels of marble that watched over the cemetery. Perhaps just as dumb as one too. “What?”

“I did not expect you to volunteer to this fool’s errand.” Reid stated, his eyes blinking slowly as he averted his gaze. Geoffrey nearly thought for a moment that perhaps he had caught the leech off guard. “Are you aware the antidote will have the blood of two vampires? It may be enough to make you turn.”

The Doctor must think him completely ignorant, truly. Geoffrey had always been aware of such, he didn’t dismiss the relics that Priwen hoarded as children’s tales, despite the rule of thumb to regard most of that knowledge as forbidden and/or better off destroyed. To be the one to decide what to do with it, he ought to at least know. And he had known from the beginning that Arthur had been a leech, although it was debatable of when he had been turned. Yet another evidence throughout history that will prevailed, until it didn’t anymore. Arthur had been venerable in life and gone before he could see his legacy die at his own hands.

Wasn’t that all any man could ever hope for? “Or not. I am still here, am I not? I will not shy away from this battle, leech. Besides, who is to say you can put this beast down alone? This is my field, not yours.”

Reid had clearly come far in his knowledge about his kind, but he clearly didn’t know all. There were enough notes and tomes in Priwen’s hands about the Brotherhood’s old and sacred traditions, including the ones about wielding blood as Geoffrey had done. In small doses it would not turn a man, but rather heal and bestow small strengths. He had resorted to it when they fought, and he had felt it himself; a power and thrill, light within enough to fill a room.

That was Arthur’s blood, not just any leech - that was the blood of a man who, regardless of what curse had taken his sanctity, he was and would always be the greatest defender of Britain. And while suspicion and worry had crossed his mind then when he first ingested it, whatever worry had threatened to wobble his faith, he hadn’t turned at the end of it all. Thus, practicality over theory, it was safe to use.

Reid’s expression was one of someone who would insist to call the Hunter stubborn, which was a misconception. Self-assuredness wasn’t the gift of many. “Very well. We shall meet at my home then, in the West End. I trust you will be there before midnight.” 

Of course, the West End. Geoffrey would not pretend he didn’t know where that Mansion was, not when he had done an extensive research on the leech before him, everything that he was before turning and everything he could find after. He knew where to go and the routes to take, not at all far from the Headquarters he had set up at the Theatre. Still, the thought of walking the West End’s main roads was an uncomfortable one.

It went unsaid that the Guard wasn’t exactly a law-abiding organisation. Many of them were in good terms with the law, but only because it wasn’t aware fully of who they were and what they were up to. Geoffrey himself had an extensive file that ranged from murder to disruptive behavious, all that the police force caught glimpses of yet failed to know the bigger picture. To walk in those streets was a risk - his clothes and weapons denounced him as a less than honorable member of the lower classes, and a dangerous one at that. The odds of a noisy West End citizen calling the authorities on him were high - officers wouldn’t care to take a stroll to the East Docks at noon, but wouldn’t hesitate to chase, apprehend and interrogate any odd-looking fella walking at the West End at night. 

Yet, it was but a small risk to take in the face of the situation at hand. So be it. He had no doubt he could make it there before midnight, but that would depend solely on his assumption of what the time currently was being right or wrong. “You buggers from the West End think everyone owns fancy pocket watches.”

Complaining was but one of the few pleasures this life granted him without a price attached, and admittedly, Geoffrey wasn’t willing to let go of the habit. That his words brought enough distaste to the leech before him, enough to make him roll his eyes back, it all but pleased the Hunter further. Geoffrey refused to be the only one visibly displeased. 

“Hold this.” Reid said, wasting not a moment to push the handle of his umbrella forward, which Geoffrey took without much eagerness. There was a discrete amount of fumbling from the vampire’s half; the Hunter thought that perhaps there was an absurd amount of inner pockets to that coat of his, but the surprise came from the glimpse he had from under his coat.

By his hip, a sword was concealed, and under his arms, enough holsters harbouring various weapons, from a revolver to a fancy knife. The elegant coat was but a cover to the heavily armed leech, as if his true weapon wasn’t sheathed in his veins in the first place. There was apparel to go on for ages, yet what he produced from a pocket was something harmless, golden when reflecting some of the lamplights’ brightness.

A furbished watch that he unattached the chain from the edge of his pocket, and with gelid fingers, he turned Geoffrey’s palm up, the touch only lasting so long as to hand him the item. Part of him wondered how much he could make with it in the blackmarket, or how many springs and sharp pieces he could take from within it to put to use in the weapons back at the Guard that required maintenance. His thumb flickered the metal cover open, only to gaze at the nacre face inside. 

_ Doctor Jonathan Emmet Reid _ , read the inside. “I trust you can read it.”

Be it an implication that Geoffrey was uneducated enough that he couldn’t read a name, or that he would steal the piece for himself, he took offense either way, barking an answer as quickly as it came to mind. “Fuck off, Reid.”

The smile Reid handed him however, didn’t have a speck of malice, no. Just a lot of teeth. Sharp canines that delicately caught on his lower lip, white teeth orderly aligned in a bright smile; unlike that coat he wore and his embellished words, none of this smile concealed his nature, his canines a statement in fact of what he was. A leech, and a genuinely amused and careless one. A fool, therefore. “Don’t be late.”

That smile and bright eyes were the last thing he focused on before the leech was gone into the shadows, a flutter of darkness that his eyes could not accompany, he couldn’t even see the trajectory Reid chose to take in his exit. As quickly as he had come, he was gone, not even footsteps to be heard. 

Geoffrey rested the umbrella on his shoulder, looping its hooked handle on his arm as he worked the pocket watch within his breast pocket, swearing quietly through the process from beginning to end. Reid was a fool for trusting a Hunter, but alas, he felt like a similar brand of idiot for agreeing to this. 

He could however turn and question his own decision making as much as he wanted in his own head, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Reid had found a way to defeat the epidemic, and whatever was it, it was in Geoffrey to believe him and take part. It was his only goal as of late - the only mission so far that hadn’t felt like waving a torch before the darkness, the fruitless attempt to keep the shadows and everything in it away.

No, the leech had a pyre to light and Geoffrey wanted to be every part of it. A fool’s errand indeed, as he had put it, but so be it. He hadn’t been fearful of what he would find before, he wasn’t fearful of his fate now. It was a difficult decision, a temporary alliance with Reid, but he stood by it. 

He could only but hope the Guard would stand by him through it. Geoffrey had never veiled his intentions and actions to the upper circle of the Guard, he took their council and trusted them with his life. He wasn’t Carl Eldritch, he wasn’t as experienced as the man had been, he had inherited the Guard at a fairly young age and perhaps his life at its head would too be brief. He wouldn’t waste those years turning blind ears to the very men and women who might inherit it after him, nor making feuds within its ranks. 

He counted on them to guard his back, and he would guard theirs with his life. He hoped they would see his reason when he explained what had just unfolded. If not seeing his reason, perhaps trust him and his bet enough to run it with, for now. 

Carl wouldn’t have, he knew. But alas, for better or for worse, he wasn’t Carl Eldritch, despite for many of his years he had walked on the man’s shadow and wished to be the very same. For a plethora of reasons, he had dropped that notion. Maybe God willed that he wasn’t the same man, in the same way He granted weaknesses to mankind. Carl wouldn’t have failed at killing Reid, he had no doubt, and none of those books Geoffrey had spared the man would have done so.

There would have been no hope if things had gone the way Carl would have intended them to. He believed in the former leader’s might more than any other, but still he doubted this was a battle for only one man, made no sense for it to be so, even if one of them was a powerful leech. In times prior it rarely had been one knight to raise a kingdom, even if it took a single blade to end a beast. Everywhere he was looking, however, there was only Reid moving towards that battle, with as much fire and determination as he found in himself.

He could search but he doubted he would find anyone else besides the two of them, noticing what was happening in London’s heart, from an entire nation fated to fall. If there was only them, so be it only the two of them, with the Guard to back him or not. But Geoffrey would not turn down a call to arms, not in this life or the next. Britain did need him, and anyone willing. 

He tightened his hold on the umbrella’s handle as he walked the safest route from Stonebridge to Finsbury. He wasn’t afraid of dropping the item, his sword arm rarely failed its grip. He was instead afraid of dropping his courage on the way there. 

  
  


\--------------------------

  
  


Silence reigned sovereign, something rare when the six of them met. The room wasn’t as fine as it once was - Priwen had won and lost plenty of ground during this vampire epidemic, and mobility was a valuable resource. The formality of the environment mattered not, as long as they gathered, it was what truly mattered.

The scenery could have been better, and could have been worse. At the basement of the Finsbury Theatre, every step upstairs was audible if belonging to someone heavy enough, and dropped dust over their heads if it bothered a particularly loose wood board. The lamp above was an improvised arrangement, had been so prior to their arrival and as they settled into the Theatre, it had been the last of their concerns to mend. It dangled precariously overhead, a wire reel underneath sporting already stains of various drinks and oil, and now had a pile of papers to battle for space against ashtrays in its limited surface.

Desks and cabinets were pushed against the walls, as well as a few safes that littered the dingy room. The light flickered, the only presence bothering to display liveliness in this moment, while Geoffrey’s neck felt particularly damp, making the scarf around his neck an itchy, warm sludge he wanted to tear away as far as he could. He felt his heart against his throat, too, almost as heavy in his mind as the folded umbrella in the corner of the room. Such an innocent yet compromising thing; right now, he felt like a criminal, walking armed back to the crime scene while it was still being scrutinised by officers.

A step wrong, and he might be caught. Except he already did his steps wrong. All he did were steps wrong; he confessed where he stood, explained everything and more, uninterrupted. Perhaps he would have preferred an interruption, it would have felt better on his nerves. Confrontation was an old acquaintance, and he would meet it with open arms any day rather than uncomfortable silence. Often, it was brewed from honesty, and he always preferred to see such, even if such honesty was the reason why conflict was inevitable.

Geoffrey liked things transparent, the world was already shady and dark as it was, leeches already made it so that nothing could be taken for its face value. Where things could be plain and clear, he would make them so. But this time, he wondered if he shouldn’t have kept his mouth shut instead. 

He could have said everything the following night, if he survived, but it wouldn’t matter then for whatever came to happen would be past. He might never come back to tell the highest circle of the Guard what exactly led to his death, but if he did, he would bring them a victory, for once. It was more than he had done as of late. Perhaps it should have been wiser. But such schemes were the work of leeches, and Geoffrey wouldn’t resort to it just yet, no.

Perhaps he should have. Watching them exchange glances, part of him wished he had. Not a large part of him, no, but a reasonably sized one all the same. The tension in the room snapped like a short circuit or rather, a spark. Jimmy  _ the Spark  _ Barlow was anything but a tiny flame. 

Former metallurgic operator and soldier, Barlow had spent years bent over the machinery he was very well known for in the Guard. Between usage and mending of equipment, Barlow wasn’t one to conceal his preference, but all the same he was a menace. He rushed leeches out of their hideouts in the same way he would say he had forced Germans out of trenches, through fire and despair. And he would say, halfway a gloat, halfway a disconnected mumble, that only one of these could make him want to drink again.

Few of his men that had served in the war came as they went, hopeful and unscathed. The Guard was often another battle, a place where they could see an outlet to the training they had spent so much time on. It was not his place to judge, no, and the doors remained open for any of them to leave, it was encouraged in fact, should they have a better life out there waiting for them. But they often didn’t. 

Geoffrey was aware that, unlike what Carl had managed, himself had in his arms a paramilitia of starved factory workers and traumatised soldiers. It was very different from the urchins and husbands and farmers Carl used to manage. Even so, he wouldn’t have his Priwen any different. With their faults, they also had their merits. He liked to believe that despite being different, so did himself in comparison to the former Leader.

Jimmy Barlow, the spark to a line of gunpowder that he was, went off as Geoffrey would expect him to. But the trail he chose to light up, strangely wasn’t immediately directed to him, but rather to the Reverend across him. “Yer awfully quiet, Chaplain. Usually you don’t wait this long before chanting some judgement, what got your tongue, ain’t gonna comment on it?”

The Chaplain in question was Reverend Kane. He broke the norm, in part, of what composed the Guard today. He was the oldest member in this circle, preceding even Geoffrey’s own time as Leader, yet that wasn’t anything to hinder the heat in his preaching or the warmth of his words. In the same way he had spent more than a decade tailoring weapons, some of them holy, to ward off leeches, he had a liking for teaching on Saturdays, holding masses on Sundays. Such a work was gravely disrupted with the epidemic, but how many urchins of the Guard had the man taught how to read and write? 

He had lived most of his life wandering the country, spreading the word and teachings of God, until one day he was the only holy man standing from his Lechery, the crucifix he wielded giving him enough time to pin down the leech that ambushed him. He had known then that perhaps his time of only preaching had ceased, and there was more use to a man of God than speech and teaching. New labour which didn't prevent the firm Reverend from doing the former whenever possible. 

He was indeed rather quiet through the entirety of the situation. Kane abhorred leeches, saw in them the devil, a view shared among many of the Guards yet with him, his zeal was outstanding. Their most experienced Chaplain was intelligent and down to earth, but perhaps the strongest in his faith among all of them. In part, Geoffrey had expected him to interrupt him, but he hadn’t. 

The Reverend all but shook his hand dismissively. “You already know what I think of this, son. I am doing God’s work for long enough to know that there is nothing that comes from the devil, be it freshwater or bread, that can mean well.” Kane explained himself, leaning back on the feeble, uncomfortable wooden chair he was lounging on. It didn’t look at all luxurious, but even so, it was one of the few movable chairs they had available.

Geoffrey didn’t expect him to say any different, no. Still, did his words make him want to wince. Who picked the thread wasn’t Barlow, however, but rather Rodger. The urchin lacked a last name, as most orphans did. He had been raised at the Guard, not unlike Geoffrey in a way - Roger went from being a troubled teen hoping from charity to charity and petty thievery, only to find a purpose at the Guard.

He had street smarts to spare, a wonderful tracker who knew this city better than anyone else, yet in the same way he was unstoppable when he chose to use his height and width in a fight, he could easily be seen as the most diplomatic of the circle. An urchin saw enough violence in their life, it came and went easily, as did anything else. To speak, to read, to reach middle grounds, that was an effort. To keep feeding his mostly gentle nature and liking for music, that was an herculean labour.

Roger  _ the Wall _ was not one in for easy jobs. He spoke before any interjection could come across. “Long enough for you to know that just anyone can become a leech. They still get their moments of lucidity, and they do remember everything from when they were alive.” 

“To remember ain’t to stick by any of it!” Jimmy  _ the Spark  _ Barlow scoffed right back, outrage not at all concealed behind his voice. The veteran was ready to stand from his seat, by far one of the most short tempered of the circle, but not the holder of that title. Toby Sheen, on Barlow’s right, held that honour. 

“But maybe it's enough for a Doctor to find a cure to this Hell we are livin’ in- sorry father.” Roger reasoned, his apologies turning to the Reverend at Geoffrey’s left only a second later.

“Forgiven.” Was all Kane offered, his intonation eerily calm in comparison to the room, calm enough to chill most of the tension in the air. It was thick enough one might attempt and perhaps succeed at cutting it with a razor. Geoffrey surely felt like he was suffocating in it, and between suffocating from an ailment and another, he chose the slightly more pleasant one. 

His fingers reached for the matchsticks cast on a broken cup, and taking off the cigarette case from his breast pocket, he nearly opened it promptly. He would have done so immediately if not for the item he held alongside it. In his quickness to withdraw the case, he thought little of what he was grasping, and now he faced it as if catching sight of the golden item for the first time.

It was a beautiful thing, albeit heavy as well. At the Stonebridge Cemetery he hadn’t bothered to inspect its details, but now he could see engraved bushes, littered with flowers that might be safe to assume to be roses. To think, Geoffrey had no liking for the West End, but he might have seen more roses there than anywhere else in London. Was it a liking for the neighbourhood or a statement of their wealth, he wouldn’t know for sure. That was all parts of a finer game than what he usually resorted to. 

The lion at its face however, a serene sculpture of the beasts that guarded a few rare porches, that was a far more familiar symbol. Untameable creature, protector of England, the West End was full of lion statues, guarding their homes as Romanians would hang garlic from their windows to keep themselves safe. It was a beautiful image, without doubt; the calm beast held no wrinkles to its muzzle and instead, displayed a full mane that shielded its neck and merged with the rose bushes that framed the edge of the expensive watch. Determined eyes gazed upon the beholder, strong jaws at rest, a fine beast, tireless and strong. 

Flickering it open, pointers signalled he had less than an hour to midnight, the largest pointer ticking precisely at the seconds mark over a white pearl,  _ nacre _ background. Opposite to it, on the back of the lion lid, a name was finely engraved and well centered on the back.  _ Doctor Jonathan Emmet Reid. _

On a smaller scale, he came to realise two letters preceded by an hífen stood under his name, not in the same cursive and a little too close to the rim, as if added on a later date with far less tenderness. - _ AB _ . The Doctor’s blood type, of course. He had gone to war, shouldn’t he forget.

It wasn’t too late for Geoffrey to give up on his fool’s errand, he thought. The Doctor’s choice of words remained in his head, he had mulled on them over and over again all the way to the Theatre, remaining to do even now as he watched his inner highest circle argue. He would perhaps prevent further arguments by simply heeding by what seemed to be the majority of opinions. Yet, in between staying back and trusting the leech, what exactly would sit in the worst manner in his stomach?

By the ease in which he could zone out of an argument and get lost counting minutes, thinking of how long it would take to get himself geared and ready, he had no doubt on what would feel less true to his gut. This was a battle he should go to, trap or not, successful or not. He closed the item, placing it back on his breast pocket, and finally taking a cigarette from the far less expensive box, he lit it up. 

He hadn’t realised that Toby was waiting for him to light it up and focus again on the conversation so he could speak up. “...That’s wishful thinking, Roger. It’s still a leech! Say, let's consider this Doctor does have an antidote and is working to undo the epidemic, what would he need McCullum for? He could go alone. Maybe he’s just packing a snack for the trip, ever thought of that?”

Toby Sheen was, by far, the shortest to sit at the table and had a temper to match. He was a sickly young man, actual twin from the man next to him that clearly had all the brawl and strength of the duo. It mattered little; Toby was the devil, with an aim with the crossbow that wouldn’t miss a leech regardless of the circumstances. He was a ferocious tracker, and to hear him approaching, howling taunts like a drunkard out of booze, tended to be enough to lure any beast from their hiding place.

If he lived up to this day, it was because not only the brawl, his brother Vincent had also inherited the good sense. They always fought together, planned together, and evened each other out. They made a name in the Guard for themselves with their remarkable teamwork, albeit that seamless equilibrium seemed to be reserved only for warfare - out of it, the fringes and poor needlework showed, and they argued more often than not, a difficult duo to coexist with.

Toby’s sharp accent and snark could make many cower - if not wary of a flaming bolt to their backs, then afraid of Vincent’s fist, that never took long to find whomever thought they could mess with Toby - but not Roger. Roger only shook his head, as unafraid as ever. “There’s easier snacks than McCullum. It clearly needs some help.”

It should come to no surprise whatsoever that the opinions that tended to align the most were always between Toby and Jimmy, both short-tempered pyromaniacs _.  _ The aspiring arsonists might be as different as water and wine, yet come to this very table and they always seemed to take the same side. Jimmy Barlow slid in as oily as an eel, catching the loose string of Roger’s argument to throw it back at the urchin. 

“It might be so, aye, but maybe it ain’t to end the epidemic it needs help. Maybe it needs a sacrifice to save its own ass. Wasn’t there a bunch of blood cultists in the countryside a while ago that would do shit like this?” Barlow said, taking his own cigarette case from his pockets and lighting it up with a practiced quickness. The bangs of curly dark hair that fell in front of his temples weren’t a choice derived from style, but rather an equally ritualistic habit of lighting his cigarettes from the mouth of a flame-thrower.

Geoffrey didn’t harbour geniuses here, he knew. But even as Toby looked absolutely insufferable with his large eyes and freckled limbs that he waved obnoxiously about, he knew they were the best. The best fighters, and the best leaders too, although moments like these might fool even the most non-judgemental observer. Vincent ruptured his traditional quietness to mumble from underneath his bonet, shadowing a set of freckles that matched his much smaller twin’s. “Sounds far-fetched. There’s easier sacrifices.”

At the very least his words interrupted Toby’s glee where it stood. Geoffrey had been counting the time before the marksman would begin talking again, and it was never a pleasant noise. At least now he did so with displeasure, an intonation a little less annoying than his joy. “You can’t possibly be with Roger on this.”

Toby’s eyes seemed like they would fall off his skull as his twin shrugged as an answer and stood by his words. “Look, this all looks too complex for a game… I ain’t with Roger, I’m with McCullum. He usually has a good gut for that stuff.”

Geoffrey had perhaps grown comfortable with his smoke and the lack of eyes on himself, for the moment they looked back at him, he could feel indecision creeping like nausea back to him. Their attention on him left him as fast as it came when Jimmy Barlow insisted, crossing his arms. “It can only be a trap. Yer with me, ain’t you Reverend?”

Agree or disagree with Barlow as often as one might, the man was at least resourceful. There was no trench unchecked in his shifts, and he wouldn’t go without poking any and every thinking mind present at this table until he knew where they stood and where he might find support. He supposed he had a right to be this distrusting - they all had, in fact. Life had never treated any of them fairly, yet, he saw in these men the best traits he could ask for in allies. Bravery, loyalty, level headedness for some. Tenacity in others. All worth their weight, without exception.

Barlow had a right to not trust any shadow. It was just strange, perhaps, to see him being one of the few to wield that right at all times, when many that went through events just as woeful yet found some trust to hand off from their hearts. Reverend Kane tended to be such a person. He forgave crimes and offense with an ease that granted him thoroughly the respect deserving to a priest, even among the unbelieving. 

But he didn’t extend that mercy to leeches. Never had, never would. “A leech is an abomination, a perversion of God’s creation into one of the demon’s tools. It has fallen, although it is much like men.”

The way Barlow frowned to Kane made Geoffrey think that perhaps the threat of them all falling into a fight wasn’t entirely past. “What the Hell ya mean by that? You think we should trust it?”

“You misinterpreted me.” The Reverend spoke, tone firmer than what he had been sparing the conversation so far. If that didn’t make Barlow step back with his accusation, then truly nothing else in the world would. “I say it can never be trusted fully. Yet, we are all sinners in varying degrees, none is holy in absolute but our Lord and Saviour. Little of it matters, however, when a decision was already made.”

Kane, only a few inches to Geoffrey’s left, looked at him as intensely as if seeking to get his attention from across the room. “Wasn’t it, McCullum?”

He already knew the answer to that, of course. Himself knew, the Reverend knew, yet there was a need to bring the fact back to the table. The intent might be to establish that there was little use to arguing when a decision was already made, but for Geoffrey, it felt as if a door behind himself had been closed. He had a choice, up to now. He licked his own lips before placing the cigarette against them, a deep drag that he filled his mouth with and let sit before he inhaled it through the grit of his teeth.

It was already made, yes. In fact, it was an easy decision, instinctual even. Reid said ‘ _ battle _ ’, kill ugly monster, and just like that, Geoffrey was in. The issue always came whenever he had time to mull on those things and came to ponder on what the Hell would it mean now that he was putting trust and faith in the hands of a leech when he had always considered them gone beyond any of that trust.

The hypocrisy was loud enough to shame, but not enough to make him back away from what his heart found as right. Even if it might mean a lot of sleepless nights if he lived through this. “It was. Doesn’t mean I don’t want all of you to back it up, and to do a bloody good job at avenging me if I die.”

There was no truer words that he could offer them. It must have felt so, for despite various exchanges of glances, silence reigned for a few seconds before Barlow resigned. “I still say against it. Toby?”

Where Jimmy Barlow was collected about the apparent defeat, Toby Sheen was anything but. His face was red, as it often did when the short Welshman was on the verge of imploding, or perhaps shooting the first bolt of the night, only rarely those against a Skal. His temper had a remarkably high fire rate, but still somehow he held on the fringes of it. Perhaps it was the lack of Vincent backing him up for once, not that it ever had stopped the marksman from buying a fight anyway. “Does it matter? I’m just gonna go prepare for the  _ avenging _ part.”

Geoffrey was close to having enough of Toby for the night. The lad had a mouth to him, which wasn’t entirely impossible to coexist with, but he found himself with little patience to spare him. Where Toby’s whining irritated like glass ground against peebles, Roger spoke as softly as a boy too tall, quiet and with a smile by his right. “We stand with you, McCullum. I guess I’ll pray for you while you’re out.”

There was nothing else he could really ask of them. He had informed them from the very beginning that none of them were to accompany him in this. The Guard of Priwen would need every single one of them in case anything happened to him. He had their reluctant support, but it was one all the same - it was the true blessing he had come here seeking, he supposed.

He might fall at a devil’s trap but he did have his last supper reunited with those who mattered. He left good men in this world, come whatever may. He balanced the few bits of his cigarette between his fingers and stood with a sigh, raising his hands to the lamp above and most importantly, to the small switch on its side. It was hot but it would kill the energy of the precarious thing if he fought the heat long enough to turn it.

“Thank you, Priwen. Meeting is over. Get your asses to work.” Geoffrey said, and as they stood one by one to leave the basement, Geoffrey spun the little switch carefully, needing a couple tries to turn it off. 

Arthur’s blood, two drops, was already upstairs and waiting for him, along with all the ammo he could carry on himself. The light died slowly, still leaving the Hunter half blind as he made his way out of the room towards the staircase, his hands seeking the walls and rails memory positioned in his mind. There was a sentiment of finality when he closed the door behind himself, the last to leave the basement, and was faced with the well-lit stage.

Maybe he was walking into his death. Perhaps. This very stage haunted him with the certainty he had been spared - what difference did it make whether or not he went. Not necessarily this fight was his, even if the war was and would always be. 

It was a call, he supposed. As deep as men’s natures, it was his labour. After avenging his parents and putting Ian down, nothing truly had kept him at Carl’s side. It was not the tragedy that shaped him into the Hunter he was today, but rather that he heard the Hunt’s call and answered its beckon willingly, every night. He permitted the circumstances to make him the soldier that trauma had required him to be so only once. 

Much like a leech, he supposed. Some became monsters, some resisted for long years, despising every single day until they inevitably surrendered. McCullum had surrendered himself to his Hunt without a second thought, a monster from his very night of turning, in a way.

Vaguely, distantly, he wondered if there was yet something of himself to save. Even leeches believed in themselves and their capacity to overcome what they ultimately couldn’t. What about himself? He wasn’t proud of the entirety of the decisions of his life, and hypocrisy weighed heavy, tasted bitter.

Perhaps there was yet something he could do to be a little more than a blind leech killer. The difference between a foot soldier and a proper war general was not the number of graves they filled, but rather the decisions they made. To trust Reid wasn’t enough to make sure he did his part to end this epidemic, and to pay off any delays he might have caused.

If to die was the ultimate price, so be it. This called as loudly as any Hunt, the land called for him to be in motion. And he would answer it as he should. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- You’re in the third chapter now - consider leaving your opinion, criticism or praise? Not necessary, of course, but highly appreciated! 
> 
> \- The members of the Guard of Priwen are 5 special bosses that you meet in-game. Jonathan supposedly kill them all, but in this work I chose to spare them and make them characters of their own. Each has a role and personality that mirrors an important Knight of the Round Table - do you have any guesses?


End file.
